Clouds in formation

Clouds in formation

Scale down

Feel the dirt, hard concrete,

wary neighbor's stare.

I walk street-lined forests

parking lots

businesses closed for the night

flitting by, a ghostly presence

You never would answer my

Circe-eyed stare, babbling confessions

Less caricature than urchin hiding

behind the starlit screen

You were everybody's dream

You said:  "we are our own future." 

Everyone believed.

Stopping to remember

soot-encrusted steps

smoking Marlboro cigarettes

That core of authenticity

out of boredom, nervous waiting,

demon dancing fairy tales,

skittering dreams

I didn't know at twenty

any more than I do today

Over bright subway lights

people flashing drawn and green

stop to stop

popping bursts of bubble-wrap

Iridescent jellybeans

childish play

Seated at this well-worn window

watching winter unfurl

reminded of planetary inhibitions;

starlight only entices, never means to

settle down, to calcify

Looking backward,

whispers of dust

molecules in migration

There is a viscosity to twilight

Cut from the core

fruit of neural womb, gestating decades

sluggish, subject to cravings, livid dreams

Within the secrets of the seed,

occluded aspects of beginnings,

unfolding 

petal by petal

sacred in the morning dew

enticing fragrant fields

as if myths foretell our lives

The story I tell myself

may as well

be the best I can imagine

after years of imagining

Clouds focus attention on

divisions of atmosphere

Fire burns within

unaffected by sunlight