As I said once to the rotting dead of past,

What stories are told by lips of mold at last?

Battles and defeat, a wanton retreat, a stabbing cuirass?

Said He to I, “No, I died, so simple and crass.”

A love forlorn? A heart a torn perhaps? Suicide pact?

“Nay” said Him, to my chagrin, “I haven’t such tact.”

Then please, tell me, just how it be, your body’s cold?

Did you know? All the world’s a river, I and others, the rocks and refuse, The masses the flow and ebb, and you? You’re the glisten, the shine, the glow, the glinting refraction, the bouncing reflection, the whole world turned upside-down in an endless azure splotched with wisps of vapor and verisimilitude.

Did you hear? All my mind’s a fire, Distaste and derision the cracks and pops, Discord and doubt the hiss and the flare, and you? You’re the comfort, the warmth, the calm, the curious distraction, the soothing reception, the dark candor of the woods split like vines in a sprawling stretch of orange hue and sanguine familiarity.

I miss the stars.

I miss the darkness.

I miss the cold, the stillness, the peace.

I miss the air on my skin, and my breath thick in the breeze.

The peace in the isolation, the serenity lost in the night.

I miss their brightness, their clarity and reach.

I miss standing, alone in the dark, just staring at the sky, forgetting all the things I need to forget.

Just letting go, feeling the world, the same way now as it has always been.

Stan’s the man from Pakistan,

Devised a plan to get with Anne

Involving flans, lambs, and highly polished jars of jam.

Things of stone will crumble when,

We do not know why we built them.

There is a place, far from here, where the wind whispers rhymes hewn from the words of God.

Where the rocks gleam with the spit of man, massed piles of granite and obsidian rejects, strewn about like marbles from the sky.

A place where all the birds are stripped bare of feathers and limbs and crawl through the grass like beaked-worms.

The trees all bleed milky dew with a scent of berries mixed with old blood, attracting insects that stick and die, wings twitching in the wind.

Sometimes it’s her hair, or her eyes, or lips.

Sometimes it’s the way she tilts her head when she talks.

Sometimes it’s her breasts, or her ass.

Sometimes it’s the way she walks when she knows you’re watching.

Sometimes it’s hearing her speak your name.

Sometimes it’s her long legs, or her creamy skin.

Sometimes it’s the words she uses when she talks, or those ideas that nobody else ever has.