Exhaustion.


The hand of night slides into the skirt of morning--they run right on through in a tangled willowy brier of smeary colors, washed-out violet limbs streaking in sweaty spokes through the gray gold of dawn's cold hips, her moonward parted lips, white with the gilt of lunar dust. She breathes alabaster.

A red flare hissed on the cheek of night.

Whether dead or not I don't know, a violin rustled beneath that dark brow and became a thorn within that eye. Christ, what they found was better than what I had, tension coiled under my tongue, a rattling in my hands. Give me song, I begged my embattled instruments, and they cranked up into an estranged melody. She breathes alabaster, they sighed through their clenched teeth.

what you want
I want to breathe it
breathe that alabaster,
chalk in my eyelashes, so foully rouged that I'd unbutton my cuffs and curl the dust into damp clouds with hot heels,
what you want, well what you gonna do, dame morning?

I could speak and see my veins wilt as that music sapped out to dry and stain.
no sir, no ma'am, night's palm is silhouetted on her alabaster thigh,
what you gonna do, dame morning, your lips fragrant with the song of night,
the hot heat of my hot heels harrowing the bent-backed grass, I cannot speak
and do not feel the need for it,
not for words like a red hissing blemish on the face of this tumbling deep.
am I not clear, dame morning,
that we are tangled and your alabaster is on my lips
that you are moonward and white
and that chorus is ascending, I feel that
like disquiet and the kick of my passion.
This is restless.

what you gonna do?