3am: part one (next exit)

An image of yourself:   palely & shakily igniting your turn

under the electric dulled-to-a-halt.

he suspects the truth—and this god is a fool

as he brings you in

from the frost.

There was a story all of a sudden

you find fabric, cling to sheets

wishing at a distance you’d find out there was

for so long

            nothing

or the breaks of a forest.

You find out you shouldn’t reproach all the rest of me.         And don’t.

remnant dreams of finding out you shouldn’t mess with the blanks

as I push the clock some miles north, over & over, so many paces

across the breach, across the counterfeit ______.

a white thumb of lies, or not

we really should clean the house:       something I cannot do

& seek you out.

I want you next to me.

The sky is snow and you never had it

for what seems like years and you leap up and throw it out.

You can’t stand it that easy.     There is not enough beneath it

for what we could, there is not enough pain in your back.

I’d buy stock in you except we are pointless.

Some miles north, you were part of the storm

This evening, he’s a cardinal on a tightrope

chirping the empty bed across the room.

this morning cannot manage such query.

chew on it when all these blind vices are clouding—

            let me cling to you in these small, filled blooms

So I think and      d  r  i  f  t

You wake up crashing through the margin; an accountant of dreams,

your memory itemizing, playing with shadows, rendering business as ruin;

blended massive embrace.  close,                  I hope,             rendered irreparably

you are the void in a dawn of frost.

Facing doom:   mouths will cry out

as our hero walks an electric turn in the plot.

3am: part four (cruel ships)

            after Theresa

            Can you remember June, scaled by the past?

In these parts, nights are cruel ships peeling-lulled

as locals reel in the hull of it when spirits never come.

It cries “you are…”

but nothing is done about it.

Relenting, so interested in madness,

its masts are its pallet,

pages and pages of your image

in the feat of the destroyer of all feathered things.

you loved ourselves too much

and dead from thirst and perfect bloom

you expelled in turn a wretchedness

that broke and left.

What was once a pleasant recollection has now been slashed

in mid-lunge.               Can you see? how you dream and do not panic?

haunting laughter between lucid scenes

to perpetuate myself in your eyes, the white wings I have lost

                        named nearly everything for something

Only what it is, unfolds where I must forgive in these small-filled moments

as time plays beauty open to lament.

I have loved dreams regarding cures

& gnaw at tonight’s cinematic ledger of objects, blurred by ink

of older events                        (you thought they would make you sick again)

Only what it is:      to go hungry for it

I chew my fingers to the bone with nervousness;

to go hungry or make it fit.

you wake, heart pounding from hauntings

to judge what adjustments are made to the place of madness

between us, and in the feat of intoxications, our prayers pass like years

as we wind them all up—

            fascination in your eyes,

as full as mirrors, your gray prophecy

shrinks to the world:    someone’s darker lament

dream not in panic for love,                           I am sure it is coming.

3am: part five (the landscape of dreams)

The landscape is caked, sentence after sentence,

the plot is saccharine, measured

pace after pace your mouth

purses from.

Cheat at this game your nightmares have with sugar

            stand then, when the alarm is a neutral hybrid

so that I see you, a fierce blast from the sixth grade

of heroes.

Only there

Surrendering images to the clock

            like trumpets,

white horses (ghost hours)

            the hero is the villain that chases you.

ask the unyielding                   wake                descend

            so much for simple

cannot bear this weight of what you serve—

what flies away and glides.

contentment is too much about beats per minute

a mere fraction, a gasp, clutched through our circling ghost.

“Shot straight out of sleep last night,” you said, darting upward with a gasp.

            armed not with alarm or guard

            more-so harmed by our halo-mirage

It still happens, but for now,

            let us rest.