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

Sing me away in a coffin, a face
A ladder leaning, splinters a maze
Contractual moorings, arson in haste
Water mistakes, a fumbling, disgrace

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 stare too long at the light in the ceiling
Recessed and warm, it’s halo, my dreaming
Conversing with it, eyes open and squinting
We manage agreement, with light relenting

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?

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

Sins of the mother covered over with rocks
Floating with the organization of gnats in flight
Seeping oil from creases in a cardboard box
Fleeing under shadows behind bloodshot sight

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.

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

Endings sewn on patchy jeans,
our bandages stuck on happy scenes
Internal sound from airless depths
in culverts and compost of other selves
Those nights alone, long and cold,
foreboding tones and brittle bones
Memorials to pain and fear left stains,
like carious forms of childhood play