To Dream of Such an Evening

--

I slept you in my mind

Woke with dreary stubbornness to negate color and light

Sound floating betwixt my ears

Piers, like glittering dust resisting gravity,

Numbed my fingertips and pushed through glass

My entire self: revolving around your core

Such an unjustifiable potion to present you

With velvet cloth draping

Cascading in droplets like fabricated tears

Leaving scars in their wake as my sleep fades wholly

Sluggish blood reviving itself like dribbling rivers.

--

And with charcoal-prints I smear a memory

Oilskin canvas too textured

Too oft reminding me of scales, mine own

And I dream you in wakefulness as I might watch you there

Swinging, creating a movement in the air

As it mussed your hair to a golden mess

Curling about stability while you love the insecurity

Substituting hypocrisy for thrill

And my skin shrivels in the heat of undesired reality.

--

Then you were close enough to touch

Never near enough to reach

While in a dark part of my skull lurked the thing

Which keeps my voices silent and my laughter bitter

And it tapped a gnarled knuckle to my bones

Whispered its wishes into the place for my marrow

So I leaned my body frontward

As though approaching a thing of magic

A thing of highest importance, of holiest purity

And I extended a trembling hand with which I hoped to meet you.

Just as I had woke, I woke again

But to the recognition of my mistake, so beautifully sore

For when I tried to reach, my inner part was lost

And, dwelling on an eve of sudden dark,

You scattered

Leaving me to love the spaceless air

Now never shall I bathe in foul despair,

But learn myself in thoughts of golden hair.

--