shy of a decade ago, i told a stranger  don’t worry, you will live, be tasted time and time again, upon lips & within, someone else’s memory. 

i have been a crook, thief  but most ashamedly a truant in those matters affectionate;   run wicked under lamplights  of cobbled-squares in tuscany  searching for melodies, heard   once, yet forgotten bitterly 

there is death come home now to roost  in the rafters of our hearts, 

and down the street  departs, an oriole we cannot see   but know to be   singing, lighter    than laughter.

by evening we shout   relent, relent  eternal trumpeter!   we cry, hurry hurry! mad-souls all  rabid & raving,  for we hear naught, but the rivermaster  eager, to ferry us onwards, to the otherside. 

what use are these  bygone-remembrances all, of a drunken-poet   who made ruin of his heart?

below the willow-boughs  their iris, corolla-collapsed dappled dewy  in sun-sown brocades.

oh no longer, please;   unearthly, to be  a wounded-soul wandering, beneath  the sycamore-trees.

we tire of teaching ourselves  to remember to forget; so for just one night, recall   half-lidded eyes, aftershaded   by opioid-overtones, of mayflower-crowns   atop amber-hair    & early-morn affairs, spelled out in cherryred-lipstick  & codeine-confessions. 

we were children then  necking gypsy-wine, lulled by poppy-sweet  promises, drifting effortlessly, thoughtlessly   towards all that was love  & whomsoever with it. 

we dance till   the divebars close, and a cold-rain  settles over   barcelona.

somewhere, shadowed  in railside-slums, the cars, skittering   over polychrome  oil-slicks,  tracing exhalations  as the breath  of this world down your neckline.

dusted-recollections  hazy-vistas each, sifted through  panoramas  dredged from dreams.