On The Other End Of Eight / new poems 2011

The Leaving

Red skin remembers
the summer of disassembling,
the stifling choke of a throat,
constricted and conflicted,
swallowing haunted shadows
with voices like ghosts fading
before they were ever even familiar.

Black heart scrapbooks
seasons of dead leaves,
set ablaze and asunder,
smoke billowing from a soul,
full of smoldering paper tigers,
and notes to self aflame and fanning
the conflagration of love's lost letters.

Pink hands forgive
the premature palsy of fingers
wilted into the permanence of fists,
to beat against walls now erected
until they become a pulp fiction
rewriting in the sanguine of blood cells
an empty book of days not to be.

Yellow eyes reflect
the time lost in the flickering light
of memories fading from senses,
taste, smell, sound, touch, and sight
conjuring the last artists' renderings,
becoming a charcoal of trembling
shuddering to think of itself.

Grey matter forgets
even the chalk outlines of children
stoic beneath a crayon sun,
running scared with the sudden rain,
a flood of confusion confiscating
even the best of memories,
drowning them beneath a childish dream.

Blue lips recall
the leaving, long left behind
along with the shiver of "is"
before it ever longed to be
the lingering, warm reverie,
the soft, supple nostalgia of "was,"
left instead this cold comfort to kiss.