(This came just after a sad dream I just couldn't shake. It needs a lot of work but thanks in advance to anyone who reads it.)
---
A gray pall cast behind her
Standing in the doorway, smoking chains like vapor
Dancing on the table
Features of an envious pastry maker
Sitting listless and obstinate
Screens thin as hair strands freezing
In this, what a slow, mint breeze brings
A moment, untamed tenant:
Speak we; sold our tongues for tires
Hear discord drown in time with a dirge that has no heart
That is not called for
Nor will it please me to depart from here
The boats out in the prairie calm water anchor themselves near to shore
Some stay stranded on the horizon, rushed and flayed by the ocean's pull
Witnessed by empty sentinels, lonely benches, four by four as
Thick as thieves the clouds roll in, prying apart the vessel's hull
Drifting downwards on the back of an arch of wind that passes its heart
Into the open space, the cracks between the monarch and the opaque illusion
The play of the harp and the silver words that sweeten thy tongue, abreast, apart
We ride, our thoughts, one leaf that falls into my lap, I take in delusion
Lights and all of the Friar's bridesmaids, hopping down the aisle blindly
Desperate for this thing beside me: Love, I have not pried from its cage
These eyes I've caught in my hands and peddled, blinking strokes along this empty page
Pale under the dirty moonlight, passing us: the preacher's scree
Not that we'd failed in any detail the winding pathways by which we flee
Fingers like vines, like shadows that sprout over the great white, gambling sea:
Will there, in the decades to come, come a time when humankind has finally found a way to consign our time
To breathing between each vowel and verb?
Verbiage we think that would help us now that they've heard
Of our accomplishments, rooted in sedimentary looselessness
Shaking off our masks and our muzzles, heckling our own implicit uselessness
And what blood pacts we take without making more plans
The children we mold in our trembling hands with the fluids of our elders;
No one sees us in the darkness of this place
No one hears us in the quiet of this place
The feathers in your hair are peace signs
Silhouetted against the lightless air
Our elders surrounding us with all of their knowledge:
You're saying, maybe I'll go to college for you
And I'm saying maybe I'll become a girl for you
And we'll birth each other all over, all new
When we're slick we'll learn to speak
Peek out from under our translucent eyelids
Sell our tongues for tires
Upon our oily skin, light endless fires
So that no one will ever not see us
Laying out here beside the goats and their kids
The barn could burn
And turn into ash she'll flick from her cigarette
Without which, a passing thought might discern-
But here it passes and does not linger in the doorway
That deep sliver where you cut open your finger and pressed it to mine
And the blood became one
So we fired the sun
Announced it to everyone
The skies might have calmed by the time we were done.
---
A gray pall cast behind her
Standing in the doorway, smoking chains like vapor
Dancing on the table
Features of an envious pastry maker
Sitting listless and obstinate
Screens thin as hair strands freezing
In this, what a slow, mint breeze brings
A moment, untamed tenant:
Speak we; sold our tongues for tires
Hear discord drown in time with a dirge that has no heart
That is not called for
Nor will it please me to depart from here
The boats out in the prairie calm water anchor themselves near to shore
Some stay stranded on the horizon, rushed and flayed by the ocean's pull
Witnessed by empty sentinels, lonely benches, four by four as
Thick as thieves the clouds roll in, prying apart the vessel's hull
Drifting downwards on the back of an arch of wind that passes its heart
Into the open space, the cracks between the monarch and the opaque illusion
The play of the harp and the silver words that sweeten thy tongue, abreast, apart
We ride, our thoughts, one leaf that falls into my lap, I take in delusion
Lights and all of the Friar's bridesmaids, hopping down the aisle blindly
Desperate for this thing beside me: Love, I have not pried from its cage
These eyes I've caught in my hands and peddled, blinking strokes along this empty page
Pale under the dirty moonlight, passing us: the preacher's scree
Not that we'd failed in any detail the winding pathways by which we flee
Fingers like vines, like shadows that sprout over the great white, gambling sea:
Will there, in the decades to come, come a time when humankind has finally found a way to consign our time
To breathing between each vowel and verb?
Verbiage we think that would help us now that they've heard
Of our accomplishments, rooted in sedimentary looselessness
Shaking off our masks and our muzzles, heckling our own implicit uselessness
And what blood pacts we take without making more plans
The children we mold in our trembling hands with the fluids of our elders;
No one sees us in the darkness of this place
No one hears us in the quiet of this place
The feathers in your hair are peace signs
Silhouetted against the lightless air
Our elders surrounding us with all of their knowledge:
You're saying, maybe I'll go to college for you
And I'm saying maybe I'll become a girl for you
And we'll birth each other all over, all new
When we're slick we'll learn to speak
Peek out from under our translucent eyelids
Sell our tongues for tires
Upon our oily skin, light endless fires
So that no one will ever not see us
Laying out here beside the goats and their kids
The barn could burn
And turn into ash she'll flick from her cigarette
Without which, a passing thought might discern-
But here it passes and does not linger in the doorway
That deep sliver where you cut open your finger and pressed it to mine
And the blood became one
So we fired the sun
Announced it to everyone
The skies might have calmed by the time we were done.