chiaroscuro

Sweet eyes Delicious dark eyes Eyes that look at me I am entranced You sing I hold my breath Your voice rasps Your body sings I can't help but dance along My eye smokes My voice shakes I don't mind at all Crack in the bell Whisper of the spell You must be magic For I am ensorcelled The horizon breaks Your face beams I can't help but melt If I am a symphony You are my conductor My bones are supposed to be strong I guess I hadn't prepared For the way your eyes soften When they take me in Wishing for something Dancing in the dark Open sign flashing Nonchalant beauty Pining and confused We speak Corner of your mouth Tip of my tongue Flash of white teeth Shivering in summer Trembling in the fall Blushing in winter Let's start it all over in the spring Iron heart In the blacksmith's hearth Can you see my pulse jumping? I want to soar over the world But your hand tugs And your fingers intertwine Holding my hand In your lar...

We sit in the empty amphitheatre The sky grumbling above us You have on that thoughtful smile The kind that makes your forehead crinkle You told me you had something on your mind Something quite pressing, quite pressing indeed And I wait, waiting as the sky seethes above Anticipation building like a wave of froth You told me of a ring and a silky white dress A calico cat purring by a puddle of gold And part of me begins to bleed As you cough again, bending like a blade in the wind They say we are material beings Fickle to the passing of the seasons I cannot think of anything else Watching you wane as the trees turnblack It's such a small room, so bare and white Window speckled with frost Coughing smiling sleeping writhing You live the cycle you always wrote about I hold you as you fall asleep Into the dreamless sleep of dreams I weep over the you of yesterday In a silky white dress, a ring of gold And a calico cat sleeping by a puddle of sil...

We see the blood and the feathers We mourn your loss, your hubris and your fall Can you even claw your way back up? You donned the robe of the fire bird   We have told you before   To gain flight, you must burn your heart You soar, but you cannot breathe   You fly, but you cannot see the earth There is no one but the frigid stars to keep you company. A meteor with a golden, fiery tail Blazing furiously through the unforgiving abyss How can this truly be what you want? No longer do you possess humanity There is no beating heart of flesh in your fiery bosom   Nothing but rage and metal and the heat of your fury He had to channel the moon in his veins To raise the ocean to meet the sky He drowned the stars in his tears He forced water into ice, into brittle shards of harm He already buried one golden eyed princess He can do it once more, over and over again. Fire met water in a blaze of steam and rage Mighty grief and migh...

Drifting like a folded paper Slipping between the cracks Wishing for that burning sensation Between my teeth and tongue, tasting summer, savoring fire Steam and smoke, paper pipes Nickels between your fingers Straps and buckles crossing chests Standing at the end of the cross walk Waiting for the lights to turn white Rolling done grey streets My urban fantasy We see those stripes of white Like some cemented ribbons A crown of this city queen Arching tails of ocean spray Liquid jewels gracing the sky's collar I see her ivory hand and her graceful air The great goddess of the sea She nods and sinks below the waves Desert sand and bloodied steel He takes them both in hand Seizing obsidian eyes But there is nothing Between the slave and the wilderness   The sky is a big blue box I'm sitting inside the box Wishing I was in the bigger black box Wanting to see all the floating boxes Shining in the glow of the great yellow box

The city reeks of heartsickness Sewers intertwining like veins under blackened skin Do you hear the thrum of the municipality? It's like the song of a girl drinking Scotch by the sea Throaty laughter, bubbling glee If I asked you to dirty dance on the bridge with me You would laugh and pull me into the river Where we would sing and grind to Queen All night by the light of a thousand stars and one big moon All you see is the world in monochrome Shades of grey, shades of grey I wish you would take off those stupid custom glasses And see me in shades of color, shades of color Instead of just in shades We once took sixty dollars from your dad's safe And borrowed my older sister's minivan Got drunk on her leftover cider And sang terrible blues all the way to Washington Baby, let's do all that again All you see is the world in monochrome Shades of grey, shades of grey I wish you would take off those stupid custom glasses A...

I see the neon stars on black rectangles and the sky is a misty shade of pastel A single white light bulb sparkles above green and white checkered tiles and a wizened crone rocks on a metal chair The motorcycle is a color of a child's yawn and its engine sounds like a purr We sit on the metal sheets of roofs and kick off rust watching the sun rise as we eat tea cakes and rice triangles The air smells like sweat and engine oil Astringent and sweet, the scent of the urban city Alleyways narrower than a breadth of a man The dog slips through the beaten iron gate Wooden floors and flowery bed spreads Her voice sounds like paper in water Endless sky, endless earth Scrapers of the sky, neon lights like a necklace across the horizon's chest. 

I am the person riding the shadows No one sees me at first But once the sun dial hits the ground Only then will they know That time is insane and I live If eyes are nitroglycerin and hearts are clocks Then this world is a chittering pipe bomb Electronic ticking in my bloodstream Marble fingers dancing over my jugular They say the sea only uncombs her hair at night Rippling over the undercurrent Shells and mollusks like gems in her lavish curls Spilling on to the golden skin of the beach You can learn a lot from diary entries By the scribbles on the paper Ink for the confident and lead for the confused And doodles for the abstract Dust, dust, so much dust On my fingers and tabletop Why are specks of matter everywhere Specks of obscurity or substance? Old faces are worse than old memories For there are 43 muscles in the face That could make either ten thousand smiles Or tell ten thousand lies Play me a memory on white and bl...