Johanna
I shant discuss the scant objectivity
of fists full of cherry blossom petals
bathed in the ocher afterglow of one
more buzzing streetlight passed above
the halo of car windows. Hungry
watchmen pigeonholed behind the guise
of yet another homeless vagrant, eyes
peeling back from thumbnails, perjuring
please help signs on the sidewalk,

and Johanna is a vision
of something silent

yet
to
approach

the small talk, the rosary beads
bejeweled plastic recollect
reclusive pro-lifers littering the
walkway (all too silent) like
the cherry blossom petals that
fell yesterday when the gnawing
rain held the afternoon hostage;

the sky
merely a cruel captor, to our
rambunctious retellings, though

Johanna erodes the scene like
salt calcifying what remains of
your gauzy throat;

she
watching
the red-yellow-black ashes
sputter from a cigarette while
it cliff dives onto the ground
from a lazy finger,

watches how they fall like
color from a paintbrush
dropped to symbolize too many
surrealistic portraits of the night;

how it fights
for the sight of her.

How she often times
puts the real in Surrealism,
and lays loquacious jokes
at her feet.

Past the dawn she will
twiddle her index fingers,

fold
and unfold
yet another 100% cashmere
scarf from around her neck,
depending on how cold
the room might grow in the
glowing gloom,

though she pats Bella
on the head as she curls up
beside the space heater to
fall faint into another
hour of roaming sleep,

tugging fingers away,
cherry blossom sway

though Johanna still resembles
a vision of something incomplete,
waiting to obey.