The markers on the highway are singing of night's white gleam.
I am two eyes lifting from the ivory smoke-out
Watching them like a trail of matches you dropped behind,
With your flat-footed nakedness, sauntering, swaggering,
While the dying flames are dreaming of cigarettes you'll never smoke,
While the hungry embers are reaching for that old
Tobacco breath that will never nest in my lungs again -
I don't think I love you anymore -
It is cancerous, bubbling,
It is ripping my flesh anew with fingers like charcoal paper,
Like roasting meat,
Like wood waiting passively for the fire's whispering touch.

You used to roll your own tobacco leaves.
I am crisp and frail, reaching for them,
Never sure of how the flaky touch would one day boil to ashes.
The mountain is tugging me, the tumbling mystery,
White markers ablaze and all;
Light is spilling from the sky, gray and misty
As if night and morning are distilling themselves
Into hovering phrases, half-*** excuses -
I'll fix it one day, I swear -
The fog is barely unsticking itself from the rocky peaks,
My jagged heart is watching as the dying haze begins to leave,
And I am wondering if that trail of cigarettes will lead me home.

I wonder about you sometimes -
What happened - where it went wrong -
The metamorphosis.
You spent all those years peering through the looking glass.
The world would bustle around you,
Hell, it could have been embroiled in flames,
But still you'd sit idle,
Unaware of the fat fingers of fire pooling at your toes,
Seeing things about me that perhaps I couldn't even see
(The things you said were always so sweet).

But I think somewhere along the way
The single-star nights
And heaving sobs in the car finally broke you
Something in that lens suddenly cracked,
And you got up from your cave,
And it never occurred to you that when things break
You need to fix them -
No, no, never.
You never looked back,
Almost as if looking through that chipped glass was something beautiful,
Like a mosaic, a kaleidoscope,
Pretending the shards weren't gouged in your eyes,
Shedding blood.

I wonder about you sometimes.
I wonder where your words roll off to now -
Who's pages are they sinking heavy into?
Who's cup are they filling?
Do your fears still make you writhe at night,
And is there some nurse-like shadow of me
To wake you from your nightmares?
I wonder about your kaleidoscope eyes,
And why the ******* don't see things the way you used to.

We are a strange blend of flesh and soul,
Ripping through the dead grass of another's
Night-time moans
And morning-time groans
Absentmindedly,
With our eyes turned towards
A map of stars
Hidden by a strange sort of azure -

We chant for the hot meat and cold drink
To wet our lips,
To slide down our throats
Ravenously,
And fill a place within us that we know
Will always be hollow;
A place that will never know the pleasure
Of being whole.

you stand so close to me,
but you can keep doing it babe -
it's sort of reckless to for me to like it,
but it makes me think that there's beauty in a racing heart.

the silent hum of peace is strumming on my heart.
i turn my head to the sky, freedom on my lips.
the horizon is pink with whimsy, with slumber,
and i think of the mountains in their stoic ways.
i think of you when you fled to the clouds
in their richness, in their roar of rain to come.

it is not a question of will i see you again?
as i close my eyes, a smile creeping forth.
it is not the scars ripping open again as
the tears bleed themselves into life.
the cold shiver of peace is firing through my veins
as dawn breaks, cleansing and free.

it is a knowing peace - i think i love you enough
i think i know - i know that i know
*i will see you again

the touch of light on the pavement tells me that you are still here.
you are just a few feet away, bustling among the business of your mind.
you are apart from me by just paper thin walls.
whether that sets me at ease, or sends my heart in frantic sprints for the door -
i do not know.

You carry eternity with you everywhere you go
Like an over sized bag.
The eddies are swirling beneath a dozen zippers,
It sinks into your arms, its all you can do
To tip over, nervously, shakily,
Before it drops
And melts into the earth, you with it,
Limbs and all.

I hear in the simplest phrases -
How was your week?
I swear it drips from your lips
Like the blood was too thick to wipe away.
It's this raw, shuddering hunger
That leaves you trembling
Every time your forever dips its hips
On the wayward wind.