shadows slow to the point where only the wine matters
they stop and watch awhile wondering,
"today"?
perpetual Sundays denounce tomorrow across a fictional bridge
constricting as a pulmonary sigh, though even the laziest of walks
would suffice to sluice a cleaner way
but I jaw the sky from where I lie, expect that it should change
into a major key, corroborate my sickest dreams and mimic mouthed mischief

and I lie in many ways more
dreary under the prescription of nervous attendance
beyond the arctic eye, the blue skied sighs
stare through the Artex topography of childhood
behind the curtains patterned with glimpsed bears, at best,
at worst the horror of a dead childhood friend
amongst the machine drawn memories
a path beyond the puddled neon jigsaws might lead me to a
closed set where the gentlemanly objects of debauched
and thrilled robberies decline while stretched behind the soft
reach of a silken knee, a nyloned thigh
the plainest lips pose the riddle that entertains your pity
yet snuff all hope of a shy siege and leave me hints in kiss
shaped welts, roses smeared like lipstick misses,
yet innocent in the routine of predicament
the parcelled dreams of hyaena logic

I am of a mind
that, in winter, the oxygen levels
decline as the trees hunch
like upturned, diseased lungs
breathless and malign