all you see is

crawling gods of
hidden worlds, secret lives they only
see flying by in flashes of reflected light
get closed like boxes born in paper factories
printed labeled and stamped by your favorite
old grown men dead eyed and stained
packet-pocketed, paid and drained--
public spaces closed around us shedding
pieces of their final persons--
grey plague magi rooted, gaunt in neat arrangement
resembling cloaked crucifixes in stinging desert winds.
another sweet and fickle beast
unleashed in an old metropolis, where the
dreams sound like wishes gone mad.
in time the new hearts chirp their mirth, coughing up
thoughts they've kicked around re: the next
day after's answers. they punctuate my sentences and have
no memory of the silences they've impregnated

ashes

no more slowly we're decaying, though they
may fill our humble fields of green
with fears of troubled movement and
old violence in between.
but now the drum they steady beat goes swaying in the
nascent autumn winds--
its thinning blankets muffle night,
its haunting hollow rings.
tonight the sea is sinking with us--
its waves
sound like its sighs--
and on its broken mirror face
i still make out its eyes.
butofcourse no dream of ours will ever see the silky dawn
in their dashes strewn along the sand--
our thoughts and hearts are torn apart
and buried in our hands.