Electric

a warm neck of evening descends

the peacock of night spreads its tail

a road slithers as darkness lulls

It's April and something is always burning

I'll let someone else tell the story

of the tortured poet's heart

the one I've hooked to the leaking car battery

igniting the ticking lantern burning

in the bowl of my chest

ragged hole where flowers once bloomed

of my enemies i told myself

"don't be afraid to be so empty

their blades pass right through you"

some part of the lord's forbearance plan

there's a blood-red sunset in an auburn sky

only the dead look up to

just a flounce of light crossing the valley

& it's cold enough to invoke the bones

to their old confessions

back when i wasn't afraid to be the one

who destroyed delicate things

just to prove that beauty

could not change me

my silence

counts the pages remembering

seasons fished from a beached bottle

washed up at my feet

on the shores of my own making

the labored sternum breathing sparks

as old fragments of the firepit fall

soot from the burnpot fertilizing

endless fields of automatic flowers

& at the end of time

the brutal wind will scatter it all

as the last of the stars

waits from the garden