a summer scene for you

                               (1)  a summer scene for you
                   
                         One late-afternoon foyer of complacent August years ago among
                             backyard kitchen jungle-gyms and
                               dulled suburban playgrounds
                            below a moonlit flickering of
                                    ethereal lightning-bugs
                                  and pre-autumn perspiration
                          humidly outside, mosquito-bitten and wearily we thirsted
                                 for domestic beer in
                                air-conditioned vestibules of young adulthood
                       purchasing mindless clothes in robust department stores
                                with daytime carpeting
                                shampooed freshly among
                               endless escalators of perpetual commerce these
                                   products will outlive us, out-give us, then inevitably
                                          bury us in overpriced boxes
                                             with inscribed tombstones atop reading
                                                     shallow anecdotes like
                                   "His name was Bill, he enjoyed smoking" or
                             "Sue shouldn't of went to work that day, but how was she to know?" now
                                back to tiresome housecleaning and underarm
                                      pinesol rug-burn rashes as
                                   a lemon-orange cleaning effluent dispersed
                                       an ammonia-like aroma
                                     languidly from your parents upstairs bedroom window
                                           into a residential noontime sky while
                                  a few miles away a
                                          rural town slumbered and
                                    exhaled its final summer leftovers
                                     down along the drifted quays aside
                                       a craggy river-wide embankment
                           
                                      (2)  these are the city outskirts
                                   
                              the drive-thru summer sundaes climaxed decades ago with
                                        the Fonz's switchblade comb upon
                                             warmed noontime docks
                               drunken with out-of-work fishermen, middle-aged and
                         fantasizing, romanticizing a dated boyhood pastime as
                              a lung-black nicotine nostalgia circumscribed her chest
                           reposed upon a parked public-bench along
                                            the fairmount foot-trails unwinding on
                                              either side of the oiled Schuylkill
                     a vacant warehouse horizon heaved its way into
                                  the coming nighttime skyline among
                             developmental forests of naive cupidity enveloping
                                              a cryptic seasonal cycle
                                       
                               (3) She bled for me
             
                                She bled love from a beaten heart within
                                    its pale body frame and
                            my amphetamine demeanor behind
                                  her eyes were nothing and not even
                                      love I reckoned I was
                                      etching sluggishly toward a
                                         heavy dose of heartache
                         one crimson family-room evening; burnished and battered,
                   her feted breath fluttered between painful intervals of intimate reprimand
                                  I put her through my personal wringer
                                          and what's worse was
                   aside all the dusted antiques and dingy residential furniture
                        her mother's turquoise condominium jewelry dangled
                        aloof from maroon carpeted rails of a fourth-story loft
                                 we'd never find god together
                              between sinuous city alleyways of
                                      tangled telephone wire
                                 spending all our lackadaisical time unraveling
                                            neighborhood discourses between
                        used automobile salesmen ambling down dirty-martini highways
                         rolling the dice, staying up all night, arising bleary-eyed and
                               malingering dreadfully down brisk neighborhood sidewalks
                                  ebb me out a water-colored portrait of
                                      us alone dead together
                            on a mangled front porch on Brooklyn's west-side as the
                      sable white-striped raccoon vindicate our retired lifestyle
                                better than we did each other if
                                    I can't touch you anymore then
                              I can't taste the shoreline lotion upon
                                    your slender shoulders anymore but
                                 if I can only touch your auburn highlighted bangs while
                                   chilled breezes roll in off the coast of northern Maine as
                                       that August afternoon on the beach we'd love
                                           each other forever and if only
                                                 then I remain
                                   envious of who we were
                                            I'll know
                                       something was right about
                                           our cocaine midnights, our
                            apartment balcony sunsets above twiggy twilit knolls of
                             our apartment manor courtyard if
                                            we can then begin to            
                                       start again within each other I
                                 may harm a fool, but not you always and
                                              forever adieu
                                                  silvouplait

                               
                             

whatever home was

                         She asked if I'd get serious a long time ago;
                                      as delicate seasons fervently transfigured beyond our ken, onto springtime riversides of daytime solace; lavishing green and reflected off melancholy mirrors of sea-foam memory surfacing; mud-filled walkways of early April desire, moss lingered and spoiled our Summer expectancy thrice over:          
                         I stared dully into a solemn afternoon courtyard; reluctantly drank in the morning, again off balance; morbidly enervated; repeating familiar oaths, fulfilling bleak prophecies; as studded mercury inhabits a dated thermometer, lungs gravely heaved within our third story window.
                         Her feelings admonished a brilliant blue dining-room table-set
                         in twentieth century livelihoods while
                         outside in the naked city
                         trolley platform foundations
                         perish above mitigated evening streets
                         gasoline dinner stoves exhale a
                         savory stench of dead gristle
                         arising into cloudless skyline obscurity, below
                         dead avenues of sacred flesh and routine existence
                         sallow moonshine grew cold around her tepid breath
                         chest sunk low and whimpering; smoker's cough and ruddy nave
                         wrought in due season, insidious playground of poignant May ruptured in
                         automobile traffic throngs of            
                         shimmering auburn deluge
                         at neighborhood bus-stops
                         humanity's misplaced squeal resounds in
                         glistening fonts of allegorical amalgamations
                         growing weary eating
                         at restaurants year-round
                         mindlessly grudging with
                         ourselves amid
                         boring Sunday boardwalks of
                         art-museums in placid August
                         sinuous heat ascends from
                         soiled mattress covers
                         another day's lease cosigned
                         by our bullshit.
                         don't pretend you're aristocratic
                         watching television
                         talk-shows late October night when
                         every day is Thanksgiving though
                         in the beginning it was Halloween when
                         we cared about our stupid guises and
                         fictional pastimes created by civil barbarians
                       
                         
                          Cindy is still
                          somehow sweet
                          in knee-highs stockings her
                          browned nipples trickling caffeine breast-milk effluent
                          on her pillow at midnight her
                          scent is soft and nimble as the cocaine commerce
                          beats down gritty alleyways of morning sickness her
                          voice shrieks immaculate violet feebly
                          awaiting planned parenthood purgatory
                         we share a bed-of late, her pregnancy prior to
                         our residential coquetry beside sill a.m. windows of
                         sunlight casements and predictable aftermath.
                                 We grew young and illumined aside soiled flowerbeds of daffodil and hyacinth. Crimson petals spread out across our delinquent readership. Winter gusts swept in prematurely off the east coast that year; we road-tripped across county mountain-lines. Rural and well acquainted; I drank truck-diner gin; suffered heartburn by the episcopal badlands, regurgitated nail polish on to Mt. Rushmore's historical visages. Gambled with the heavyhearted Navajo by the boarded Keystone precinct house. Slept with Belle Star on woolen bedspreads of rustic infidelity, inherited old western heirlooms worth hundreds, then threw 'em all away on the slot-machines
                        Discombobulated and starstruck; we overlapped timezones in your ex's convertible. Crystal meth freeways and overnight churchyard delirium.
                       Sullen and fatigued New Year's day, we parked on a residential hillside covered with snow beside a white and desolated graveyard; scattered drifts laden all around enmeshed tombstones.
                       We made love in the backseat with the radio buzzing, then slept and continued to sleep,
                                  we slept through leap-year's larkspur that February, awoke in mid-march to the sound of tractors clawing up plots of thawed earth from the adjacent cemetery. I leaned into the passenger seat and reached into the glove compartment for cigarettes.
                                  Without speaking we knew
                                  it was time
                                  to go
                                  home
                                  whatever that was.