October 2022 – Lilac Dove

Free verse poem: The evening spent waking up (Chicago)

Tell me a fable
A pretty one
Lie if you can make it half-decent

It’s as if embers from my rotten tomb have come back to life as
Soft pink edges
Anatolic, seemingly vacant rings of fire
Undertones of bluish-grey with a violence that
Covers me in indifference
But I want it to be rapture, in evocative coincidence
A tint of reimagined tendencies
My scattered disarray of silenced opinions
And violet ultramarine hesitation

I try to be gentle
But I step on leaves that crack
Crossing my fingers, there wasn’t a snail
Underneath

Behind my trepidation
There is a vicinity with a lakeside residential view
I couldn’t breathe when you were holding me
I felt like I was becoming discolored
Wondered what part of that I devised

A satin grey globe where we
Envisioned our honeymoon
Picked out places, names that seemed familiar
A euphoric but decidedly shapeless language
A foreign body
Like tectonic plates
Smooth, but not comatose
On close on purpose
A bittersweet taste
A light that turns on when you want it to be dark
A fire alarm
That burns

A missed left turn
Turn the page, crash, and burn
And still I stand at the cashier, holding dollar bills that are paper thin
Like the epitome of a half-circle
Like the cigarette, you don’t put out
Because you let the street take care of it
Cherish it
Marinate it in the heat of October in Los Angeles
A vehemence down beneath that which can’t be seen
And is never spoken aloud

Imbued by a cityscape, I miss more than you can possibly imagine
The twinkling city lights
A cacophony of everything that was so right for me
Felt so good to me
And the plasm lost its charge, and the dewdrops disappeared
I never quite got over it

Chicago
I miss you
The way you held me close to you at night
Nobody ever did it better
Than you

I’m finding it hard to
Be like a daisy
In the breeze, that moves my hair
To the other side

I hold my head in my hands
I feel like

Coming apart tonight
To tell you the truth

Endless interlaced reflection symmetry to tell me I am not what someone wants to find
Not what anybody would look for
Unless they were as disillusioned as my perception of self

Though it seems that tonight is the night
I warned you
I told you
I’m coming apart just right

Nobody ever held me like you, forgetful city