Slanted Roofs

It smells like sandalwood and fresh plastic,

Distantly cooked dinner and day-old wine.

The pants are soft and cotton, poor in design

To mimic some casualness not easily obtained.

Wooden slats interrupt vision and concrete,

Break up the blowing draft riding the back of ethereal

Music edging into the territory of lost notes.

.

This world is cold, this floor is ice.

The emotion is not absent but frozen solid.

Sharp and willing to bite, slice, slide.

The fireplace is a farce, just flickering glass

Spreading its warm, vented fingers throughout.

All over, honey light glows from glass portals

Glows in the empty black expanse of field.

.

There is a murder inside, a slaughter on the concrete.

Bare feet pad across splintered glass.

Eyes fog with the cast of day-old poison,

Left at the bottom of a cup to infect his thoughts.

There is something in the distance, some toxic blue dream

Of slanted roof and false wood boards, of blood and tears and lives,

That only he and his deadened eyes can see.