(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
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