"MAPS"

The stars scream like prairie flashlights,

my high-clergy of experience

tracing dot-to-dot maps

across my arms, the milk-pale sky

entrapped in my steely eyes.

The bulbs flash on;

My eyes close tight;

Gripping my skin;

The night glows wide;

Branching, contorting,

like pulsating tendrils

seeping into the veins in these

rubber-pearl arms.

No more than a nude shell,

sprawled on your easter-grass bed,

I cry out in sleep and lose time,

what’s mine,

the clock-hands sprint back to

last fall.

It’s all useless, the energy

pressed and pulled into

the shape of your warm lips.

Drawing air and drawing

maps like spider-veins,

plotting the points and

squeezing the truth to

the surface.