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as it were, I still can never sleep
stir under stiffened sheets
motivated by desire and dyspepsia as Vlad would say
I shake and break my breath on well-steamed stairways
at the top a girl stands, staring
with hooks attached to her lashes
can you feel the red wine rise in my throat?
acrid and burning,
it is impossible to swallow while sleeping, try it sometime,
you’ll see;
Golden eyes
stream cones of light into caverns of memory
scattering moths as they search the musty darkness
the moths will come back, they never could resist that light.
Tell me a story.
remember the most amazing five minutes of your life,
and describe them in ten.
how easy it is. Myth-making
molding men from clay
use your tongue
to stretch and pull the coiled tendrils of Time
she begins to dissolve and then reform with your voice
she doesn’t speak she doesn’t have to
and as the yellow fog rubs its back upon the windowpane,
she turns her face slowly into the moonlight
and recognition hits like hot rain
the girl in the gaps.
her image shaken free as I pulled loose the folds in the fabric of the past
the kind of beauty that can only exist in recollection
O, help me Mnemosyne!
the cold ticking of the wall clock slows and finally dies,
do you trust me?
crawl with me into the elastic space that lives between the clicks
don’t worry, we’ll be safe here
here, where a hundred years fit into several seconds,
we can, and we do, dream eternity.
