cityveinlights

Red drips down the walls, pools in the crack on the floor. There is a sense of malintent that hangs in the room like an autumn mist, sweeping around gravestone and dead things. The moon casts the room in a deep crimson, a red veil shrouding the gore and misery.

The chamber is filled with a silence that comes with a still house, faucet dripping, doors squeaking, foundation crick-crick-cracking and wind bustling the shutters. Dead things, all of them.

But not all is still in the calling. Lips part, teeth dripping with life and memories. Chandelier swings, the chains clinking like nails on glass or molar on bone.

And that’s what this is, an immortal display. Of bodies hung on wire, blanketed by death and the dark things which answer at night. Souls lingering just on the tip of cool tongues and glassy eyes. White and hollow, the bodies.

And yet, there remains a non-soul who circles the room, stiletto-heeled boots that shine and reflect the scene in a fishbowl manner; curves and concave, distortion of the night.

She hungers still, her canines empty and her mind filled with the delight of new life.

Doors creak, and legs are shoved into the chaos of the night, throats open.

Three small, green pills in an orange bottle with your name etched on a label,

Bathroom mirror still fogged, a streak the size of your hand where you would have tossed your hair with product,

Wet footprints on the tile, shower dripping, towel damp,

Sink covered in the slight remnants of your twice-a-week trim;

Left-side drawer of our shared dresser slightly opened, you always forgot to close it all the way,

The scent of your hair, the smell of your being soaked into our unmade bed;

Coffee pot still hot, the half-full cup still lukewarm to the touch,

Mug shiny except for the place your Chapstick covered lips touched the rim, the dry weather of Arizona always cracked your smile,

Plate of toast crumbs, buttered-knife in the sink and the toaster still emanating heat;

The mountain of shoes by the door that you always refused to put in their place lay dormant, cold,

The light-brown jacket hanging still from its hook on the wall, you chose the heavier one today;

Pondering you, imagination flows wild.

The shades of a rising sun before the crest breaks the horizon.

An artistic violet through overcast sky,

a beautiful hue of brilliance reflected through your eyes.

I would wake each morning to bear witness.

Under blankets of lilac light,

the formless, shrouded sky,

a shape manifests, separating from kin.

The bones were the hardest to mourn,

Seeing him splayed in the leaves with that smirk made soft things hard again,

Passion in the art, erotica in the display,

He, with his green eyes and black hair,

The skeleton face a sign of youth, of smooth skin and alabaster.

Time heals wounds and mends the broken pieces,

But memories are thick oil to time’s fluid water,

Circling, congealing, splitting, floating…

Secrets come and go like breeze through a graveyard,

We bury them with our dirt-guilt,

Mourn them as we would a lost relative or friend,

Keep them in our memory,

Visit once or thrice a year,

And in this visiting, the breeze whispers to us in the fashion of lost toys,

Sweet nothings, sour everythings,

Filling our minds with visions of could-be’s and should-haves,

And for a second, we think to dig those secrets from their homes,

Shaking them alive, awake, asking for relief and to leave bygones behind,

But in this resurrection, we remember,

Secrets come and go like breeze through a graveyard.

A certain silence always rises with black night,

Trees still in fear of the axe,

Lamb timid in sight of the slaughter,

Bright lights in milo fields awaiting the coming sun.

A mixture of shallow wind and pounding hearts,

All waiting the rising light to baptize the dark

That shadows in the eye of a new moon.

Who do you watch from the window?

Resting on your maple tree—

Devil’s hour and the man high in the sky,

Your ruffled feathers shaking in anticipation.

There.

You see him—you see two hims and there is tongue on skin and hardness inside.

And it is wrong to watch this, you think, or is there a right in the turning of the dark?

When the owls come out to play and sway among the branches.

Who do you watch from the window?

Who?

What is a place if a place isn’t there?

Under the staircase, a portal of air.

Warlocks and magic and castles with moats,

All hiding behind a curtain of coats.

So look, look, look, look! Just open your eyes,

While dragons fly rampant in fluorescent skies.

Put pen onto paper, expanding your mind,

And spell up a new world, leave bygones behind.

“The mad ones you seek are the ones who speak”

They called it madness when I confessed the way I love,

They called it madness when I refused to change the way I was,

They called it madness when I cried myself to sleep for months,

They called it madness when I became frail bones and skin,

They called it madness when I cut my leg and watched my pain bring catharsis,

They called it madness when I told them they were wrong,

They called it madness when I stared in the mirror and saw a monster,

They called it madness when I stared in the mirror and saw hope,

They called it madness when I continued to find love in strangers,

They called it madness when I admitted that I wanted to die,

And I begin to reflect that the madness they called was seeing me smile in ways that differed from the reality they sought.

It was a summer of jorts and funfetti cake,

Embracing the bodacious heat, a contrast to the snowmageddon of last winter,

Weekends spent drunk in a stupor eating beefaroni pizza, cups overflowing from the kegerator,

Jazzercising to Bobby on the Keytar, de-stressing from the life as a workaholic,

Working off oversized cankles brought on from binge eating Christmas cookies,

Such a shame it had to end this way, Frank.

I stood outside in the rain, watching you sleep,

In a bed that wasn’t ours,

Wrapped in arms that weren’t mine,

In a house we didn’t share payments on,

And I remained there, a statue in the driveway,

As you brewed coffee and baked cheese balls for a mouth that wasn’t mine,

And the cold water of realization and distaste soaked into my bones,

Hitting me right in my heart,

Slowly corroding it from satin to iron to rust,

Flaking off in bits of envy,

Leaving a muscle of rage in its place.

Crumbling stone, stumps of arms and half faces,

A broken fountain filled with clear water,

A graveyard of marble and metal surrounded in a field of daffodils,

There are vases of dead things long gone and forgotten,

A gentle breeze disrupts the sense of stillness and tension.

A man looks around at his treasures in disbelief.

He walks slowly, hands tracing a desolation of a life.

It is hard to know where you stand in reality when you look only at its reflection,

Harder still when the reflection revolved solely around you.

He wanders to the broken fountain to see, one last time,

And he takes off his shoes and his clothes and gets into the pool of mirror-liquid,

And he stares down, watching the ripples pull and distort,

His skin is cracked, the way old bones wither,

He peels back layer after layer of skin, trying to find the source of madness which brought him here,

Incense with a soft touch, smoke swirling through the air and in our brains,

Skin on skin, sheet to back and fingers interlaced,

My cross necklace splayed across your chest,

Praying on your body like this bed is an altar,

Tears falling from my cheeks in waves of satisfaction,

Because this is where I was always meant to be,

Under you, I feel cleansed of all sin.

Three candles sat and blew in the wind,

Two with a short wick, one with a twin,

Three little lights stark naked in dark,

Piercing the night with a trifecta heart.

One whispered, “Hey now, why do we shine?

We’ve limited time, why not make it mine?”

One of the twins responded in haste,

“With all this talk, I have to lambaste.

We candles have duties, strong wills and strong minds,

We must spend time shining, not philosophize.”

So, a trio of tiny flames dancing with might,

Enlightened the room that never grew bright.

The last of the group in its darkening days informed,

“I shone up too fast, but don’t be concerned.

Something has placed us here for a reason,

I hope to shine with you again in new season.”

With a last dying breath, the candle went black,

And blew out gray smoke like a chimneystack.

A duo of candles sat dimmer and sad,

Mourning their sibling, a strong comrade.

Orange air and the scent of dying flora,

I felt you begin to shift in October.

Slowly, your fingers turning yellow,

The smell of your skin a musty, sharp compost.

White eyes darkening, teeth beginning to decay,

Funny how when you lose things, they lead others to a new place.

Something so pretty—the changing of nature—embodied in someone I wanted to observe with.

Autumn was always my favorite time of the year, but now it is winter.

Where do the souls of leaves go after the fall?

They go to new houses, new beds, new embraces,

And leave their trees to shake naked in the cold.

To harvest is to murder, to colonize the balance of nature

We are a people running from and to things we cannot see

Guiding hands seek to pick us gently into palms and nurture

With the same hand squeeze us of life like a lemon

Watching our memories fall in rivers down skeletal wrists

We look to the sky and wonder

If this is here, then what is there?

Broken fingers pointing to a cosmos

Stuck in a state of fight or flight

In the mind’s eye, there are reaches unknown