cake

we got dressed up in turquoise
and you got a little high
in the church yard
hiding behind the evening
light
that disappears like white
paper beneath black ink
the July crickets sang
their legs dancing
musical windmills
we loved the picture
we were living
staying up to outlast
those night stars
every one of them
good loving takes time
and we'd watch them go
to bed
in their milky abstinence
our love aching to
burn like the sun

in December we'll make
a wedding cake from snow

candle

the moment passes
and we crave yesterday
all we missed
the torn edges
of the books we
meant to read
we were living them
flatlining from life tests
and failing from cold
storms of our own 
creation
lying on couches
window to the world
open
guilty of dreaming
being frozen to the now
classically sad, elegant voices
slip into our lives and
pretty lips are homesick
for those gone and those 
leaving
the moment passes
and the candle we crave
no longer dances

paper thin

blue veins
blood like glue
voice is rusty
separating the one
we were 
back into two
laughter a memory
I think I can't think 
anymore
my heart works so hard
just to beat
love encased inside this
explosion 
lost on thin paper
in loveless ink
I don't want to build
an empire
I just want to 
breathe

resist

night lights resist
faulty
and on rainy nights when
ghosts walk
they turn off
you need a reason to leave
your thoughts
you need to buy a magic rug
that you know must exist somewhere
to take you to anywhere but where you're at
you spent your money for food on books
and went to bed with garden dirt on your face
the window is stuck, you're stuck
feels like the whole damn world is stuck
no use to admit it out loud
silence might mean it isn't real
you felt too deep, cried too much
your money jar is empty
your mailbox is mad
the message you want will never arrive
it was downed like a paper airplane in a hailstorm
you can fly, you just don't want to
you're waiting and if you wait too long
you'll become someone weaker
and you're done being that
you wrote prose and skipped your prayers
they wouldn't miss you
you'll remember today but not the way
things happened
but the way you wanted it to be