• & the lungs of the night sky breathe you in
    the bloody pulse of the city streets pumps you out
    the old ladies in the balcony drink you down
    clay gasping for water in summer drought

    you can't hear me over the bass boom
    you can't see me waiting here
    i yelled but i was lost in reverberation
    yelled to a face so dear

    and our eyes beam, like laser lights
    shining sanguine red & verdant green
    melting film strips into puddles
    burning holes in the cinema screen

    i know you feel it through the cabin floor
    that's the beat of icarus' wings
    hermes' sandals on my feet
    eros' heart on a string

    walking on the moonlit strip
    of sidewalk, mostly obscured
    by the shaggy trees overhead
    and the clouds of gray velvet, pure

    take a breath, if you can
    breathe it in with your eyes
    hear it with your fingertips
    i know what it implies

    when colours can sing, & words can dance
    pirouette on your ear drums, with a loud allez-oop!
    legato, as they dance to la campanella
    pianissimo as sleepy heads droop

    but you were impatient, you wouldn't listen to me
    i only wanted to hold your hand
    you wanted more than i knew that i had
    falling through the ocean floor like hydrophobic sand

    'you're insane'; never had truer words been spoken
    and i felt you slip away
    you never found out about shiera hawk
    or custard on saturdays

    or that we're made of stardust
    when they exploded eons ago
    fine powdered diamond falling to earth
    misting molten lava with their silvery glow

    about the big blue books of stories
    with the little girls & teddy bears
    or that barbies were never charlie's thing
    she always tangled up their stringy plastic hair

    or how she'd beat down the walls
    and ask god why
    she was stained in ebony, not painted in ivory
    & no one heard her cry

    'hey, stay, I love you," when you pass
    the summer walks away in your flesh
    the wind runs bony fingers through your hair
    gravity tries to catch you in the mesh

    i didn't listen to momma, not this time
    georgie porgie, pudding and pie
    daddy said he'd buy a shotgun
    kissed this girl and left her to die.