Dreams and Endings

She reads on red wings

Dreams, in streams,

some vulgar things

You saw me yesterday

That dress I wore

Beautiful, I don’t recall

Walls gilded in glistening dew

Remember the day, plucked

I like the way you touch me there

Don’t stop please, god, keep on!

That feeling you create stirs me

Always, bringing me to a new height

Now, sing me away in a coffin, a face

A ladder leaning, splinters a maze

Contractual moorings, arson in haste

Water mistakes, a fumbling, disgrace

Peel the skin, it hurts to touch

Don’t touch me, I hate that feel

You insist on torturing me, why?

Leave me untouched, untouchable

Save your voice for better verse

Thrash away swiftly the proverbial horse

Better meaning and truth of will

Add and subtract the emotional till

I remember the days we were happy

Cliched, yet typically radiant, alive

Smiles, laughter, and no truer love

Could we, perhaps replay those scenes?

I stare too long at the light in the ceiling

Recessed and warm, it’s halo, my dream

Conversing with it, eyes open, squinting

We manage agreement, with light relenting

These memories are painful

Nostalgia is just not my thing

Please stop talking about the past

If I could change - if only, stop

What act is action? When words become sound

When girls control boys standing, sifting in sand

What mindfulness sprays from levers not pulled

Where are the ones we wait for? Why are there none?

The song of your voice, fluttering

The whisper of my name off your lips

Moans, sighs, pleasantries, and the enjoyment

Thunderous notes in my symphony

He raised his tongue to click, to spit

A reprimand of passion, the bridle and bit

Representing her yearning in bland, muted tones

His failure in those lives, his yoke, their stone

That shrill vindictive yell

The harsh disappointment in a voice

I dream of these and wake alarmed angered

Wishing I could forget the noise, screams

Sins of the mother covered over by rocks

Floating with the organization of gnats in flight

Seeping oil from creases in a cardboard box

Fleeing under shadows behind bloodshot sight

The look you had when you smiled,

Took my breath away, fiercely contagious

I was always striving to recreate it in you

A wondrous urge to repeat the bliss

We led each other, palms joined, once

Toward fences built and trenches dug

Simpleness of thought, content inside pairs

Which way are you looking? What stairs dare.

Dark hateful eye cast onto me

Burning, burning through every pore, charred

Dejected and rejected, abject disgrace.

Please don’t look, turn away.

We fell behind the deadline walls

where dust and rats and dead cats crawl

When smart ideas were thrown away

for love with hope and fresh decay

Asserting faith in larger things,

I stayed a course in smallest rings

Danced with demons I knew before,

then left them hiding under wood-planked floors

Pulses thread while tears vibrate, and

Bleaker thoughts contrive their escape.

Covered scars behind thickened lids

Over eyes that dreamt in melted film

Lend me your words, lay them here

Hear the blood course, watch me steer around

this fear of wanting, it compresses our sight

against half-truths and promises, ideas and lies

Those nights alone, long and cold,

foreboding tones and brittle bones

Memorials to pain and fear left stains,

like carious forms of childhood play

Endings sewn on patchy jeans,

our bandages stuck on happy scenes

Internal sound from airless depths

in culverts and compost of other selves