cryptic

you woke me well after midnight

to complain that you weren’t awake

 

i fed the curtains to the bedroom window

while whispering, “oh for heaven’s sake”

 

i watched you flit about

like curtains at an open window

mimicking a midnight breeze

 

i found the formula that fabricated

the furthest star

while you looked over my shoulder and sneezed

 

band aids don’t heal or make you whole

yet you put them on everything

kiss the skin and enter in

to all that i believe

 

we were making out at an abandoned train station

when the ghost of the last employee

walked up with a pocket watch and a lantern

and said, “move along, the trains don’t stop here no more”

 

so we found a bed in suburbia

time clocks to punch

a place to have sunday brunch

 

and the passion that was haunted by chiding ghosts

haunts these hallways without finding a body to inhabit

 

and i find myself drawn to pictures of train stations

and memories that i’ve memorized into a definition

that no longer defines

while you encapsulate another collection of photographs

as if a scrapbook can really just be a hobby

 

and i lobbied at the lining of existence

that happiness would be defined

as a day off from work

where chores you shirk

just to squeeze new memories

out of the long discarded rinds

 

and sometimes you actually do

but you only prove

that all the clues are right before your eyes

convicting the day to day that we play

without a heart fashioned from clay

but from stone

or decomposing bone

 

and you think

before it’s too late

i should recreate fate

and find the fashion i want to wear

that which truly fits me

 

but one cannot live on popcorn

that falls on the floor of the circus

or can they?

 

do you call this living?

discovering your kiss

was all the bliss

 

but now the kiss has to be sustained

among the pain of trying to carry

all the casualties that came

when we slaughtered our innocence

preened ourselves with pretense

for…

you know what?

i don’t know what for

we just did

like every other kid

 

and now the ghosts no longer tell us to move along

because we are already there

 

***