Concupiscence

Self-made-Sisyphus marching barrel after barrel of melt across the rocky earth,

Rough cut diamonds,

Dismantling Queen Frostine’s ice palace a brick at a time,

Wonder becomes was and will be, the town takes back its image between coal stained mounds.

We uncover our time to bury it somewhere else,

Little graves for every choice we make.

Psychedelia and impatience steering the ship this week between the rocks and shoals.

“Maybe I’m just miserable all the time,” she said.

Not for the first time, nor the last my dear,

Our time is slipping away, grain by jagged, bitter grain.

I stand on the opposite bank of the raging river between us,

Straining to watch your every move, straining to hear your every complaint,

Silently mouthing,

“Me too”

“Me too”

“Me too”

The stale taste of dead flowers, mothballs,

DMT’s essence rolls around the back of my mouth though I’ve had none.

Maybe death is waiting in the wings to pounce,

Or rebirth? Unlikely, though every failure spits me out raw and new.

Where is the girl that taught me how to use?

Fur coats and fentanyl on a date to Bang!

Asian tapas, disorientation, 2am shopping at Kroger,

3am steaks. Back to the opium den,

Tin foil boats and hollow masts ferrying us quickly to the undying lands.

How sweet the fruit of that sleepy youth felt passing between lovers’ lips.

Why any of this stays on my mind as I barrel back toward the town that keeps yesterday’s accomplice forever hidden

And the shadow of tomorrow’s,

A greyed out character I’ve yet to unlock,

A ride-or-die type who might rather die without me,

I know not,

It doesn’t feel like you’re the

Best thing

That ever happened to me.

Rather,

It feels you are

The only thing

The rain slicked moss coating my stairs

Beams gleefully, nourished,

Back at me as I gingerly descend them.

The misty Sunday morning on Robinson begs

The question,

Are you still here?

Or have you returned to the Valley?

To the real rot,

Where rain makes inroads in every board,

The air of everyone’s homes

Permeated by

Mold, condensation,

Where older, more primitive organisms

Reign.

Matted fur, hot air.

You forced your way into my weekend,

Angrily demanding the few items

You’d left behind.

Hardly fineries, you snuck away with

Your nightgowns clutched like gold.

Will those sheer layers

Fend off the rot?

Will his clumsy fingers

Soaked in chemicals and cancers,

Used to parting bad literature and

Punching steel tones,

Lift you above the sickness?

Or

Will they, upon parting you,

Let the mounting decay

Besiege you unchallenged?

You’ll be looking in the long mirror,

At the ac unit droning away in the corner,

At his eyes as they ravage you,

Eyes from pool days long past,

From sunlit Polaroids now

Fading in the other room.

You’ll be looking

In the long mirror tonight

At all the world around you,

The skene of your choosing,

And your brilliant eyes will

See the decay

Like radioisotopes coursing through

The veins of your life,

And then

This dry, desperate summer is being drowned

From above,

That babbling brook of old

Ripping at the belly and

Bleeding onto our plane,

Soaking the fires of our own mad grief.

Our love already extinguished by

Tragedy.

Fatal flaws conquer all in

Shakespeare’s best,

And we will certainly find no peace

Together or alone.

I won’t follow you down to the water again.

You,

Less Ophelia than Siren

Will lure souls until

Your last breath it seems,

More instinct than malice,

Selfish, cruel, automatic,

Rather than remove yourself

From the water thar defines you.

You drown by choice.

I, at last, refuse.

Ophelia, please

Tip-toeing to the edge of

The garbage pile

This little white can could

Never hope

To contain,

My head hearth high,

The scent of Nag Champa

Wafting down off the mantle

Pressed play.

“The smell of Nag Champa will always remind me of us,”

You said recently with a weak smile,

Attempting to clear the air

From a disagreement

With a breath of freshness.

Days later,

Alone

The cicadas are screaming

It’s that time of year.

The cicadas have crawled out of the earth

To scream and be known

And die.

I walk up the stairs

Into a still apartment,

Silent with evening light,

Silent with the white noise of

Their screams all around,

Silence to butt against the

Unceasing screaming inside my head.

You’re home, what will you do now?

Trapped again,

Like the iridescent intruder

Circling down the chimney,

Hidden, struggling,

Unseen by his desired.

Like the bugs’ charge

It’s all or nothing, and

If it’s all or nothing

Dawnridge. The house overlooks a ravine filled with pagodas, fantasy pavilions, and junglelike foliage.