a hard-won piano stumbled in the rain,
stabbed out its cold rhythm--childish, I know.
I hung back in the brackish fog
and watched thunderbirds with broken headlights
huddle off into flat, roiling cities of mist.
Ritchie's dead but I hear from his charred fingers,
from his lips, groping and unembalmed,
that we belong together. I don't blame him,
what the hell does a dead man know. Can't fault
a stiff for being wrong.

there are streaks in the air
where stricken leaves have whorled to the brittle grass,
afterglows of fire colors stunning twilight
and her legions of clouds into red shreds of memory,
dusty dusky banners tattering off beneath the prow of the foothills.
These are the mourning notes of a hard-won piano,
a pain sung in the tender braids of veins
strung up for to dry, crackling strains
for fools who love to pluck and say,
We belong together.
The hell we do.

I am heir to an autumn empire,
a shivering sidewalk jutting against the
hot mouth of winter, lips like coats whispering
against the skinny hips of umbrellas;
brims of stetsons dampening on beaded sills
while unsure lovers cramp desire
in tiled apartments near the fire escape.
My needle's gone bad, and so Ritchie
died in a fumble of static that stung onward
through the thin, clouded breath of evening.
I slumped in a plastic chair staring
at the vinyl scar, thinking why in hell
did my last good record
shimmy off and die
as though it had leapt from my bare balcony
into the tense fog below.

The disciples were a tawdry bunch, steeped
in sackloth and robes with broken teeth and hurried
proud tongues--it's been
such a hell of a long time
since I heard the unsweet mumbles of violins
brushing aside clover strands and staring
like red-haired girls through wearily draped evening vines,
green gowns of twilight.
My disciple friends would not approve
of such movement, of such chintzy pleasure
derived of ashen smudges beneath lip-crossed eyes.

Last I surrendered, the crickets pawned their fiddles
for mouth harps, learned to play them all bluesy and cool
like bellowed smoke from the picketed camps of armies,
a martial assemblage of nocturnal maestros.
I suppose they lent evening a bitter air tinged with taut grace,
like the first liberating waltz of tense-lipped dowagers,
their shawls still black and soot-scented from
so many hundreds of midnights spent with necks craned
like herons, peering with pale throats and rosy eyelids
into reedy mirrors, cursing with whispers the empty
corners above their shoulders where silver husbands
should have stood.
Waltzes give ground to red salsas, routed by the sharp heels of tango.
Their nightstained veils slip off between
the sweating walls of the dance floor,
are ground beneath extended toes into
cinnamon-scented tatters.
When I saw her full eyes and their rainy discourse
upon her cheeks, I laughed loud
and said wasn't this all right, wasn't this a pretty thing.

Cheap thrills, my godly compatriots chided
from beneath their burlap visages.
Last I surrendered, and it was a pretty long time ago,
it felt fine as dowagers freed from mourning cages,
but it didn't last and never does.
That's what the tawdry bunch say.

when I see the slack lines of your portrait, I
love the afternoon burn churning about the edges,
hurried mortal mumblings of winter fire
funneling around the cold knuckles of winter hills--
I love the burn, but not you.

ink slouching out from my fingernails,
slumping like sweet black blood from beneath my eyelids.
thirsty love, the slopes and contours of other lover's lives,
a thumbing of your unquickened muscles and
a tongue fumbling against your throat, taut.
Somebody told me they saw winter hills and I
was ashamed for my eyes had slit themselves of sight,
curled up in brittle dry whips of blindness.

the sullen sculptors that shimmed your heart
gypped you and slipped you one
made from the same bone as mine.
Too bad, baby doll--
you'll wanna
get that fixed.

you'll need more than
an earthen fool with tin hands.

I feel sapped, Bonnie. And it isn't over yet.