something inside me
has vanished when you left me
a brittle snakeskin

saturday night

uptown

rows of neon signs

public houses

dance clubs

watching with cheap rum and coke
gay boys feeling each other

pretty girls making fools of themselves

to the hammering noise they call music
plastic tiaras
businessmen in the corner pretending to be young
and i trying to understand

there is no joy in this kind of youth

movement to loud heart beat sounds

mutes the truth of miserable isolation

helps pretend there is unity

joined together

by this awful rhythm

hands raised now

to lime-green lasers

and cheap alcohol

going wooo wooo haaa
like little children spinning
in the attic
until the floor rises up
while the boring adults play their dinner game

things don't change

to leave your jacket
in pebbles
along the dry road

to hang your hat
on the dead
willow branch

and then walk
walk
walk
until...

is not forgetting

i still see
the pure color of
your left ear
in birch bark
between the brown trees
a ghost of dark woods

and the chipped
black lacquer
on your narrow fingernails
show among the warm
volcanic rocks

i still feel
the pink, gentle hills
around your mouth
like old, red kites
swollen
in pale sky

so i remember your beauty
for so many years
a maze of possibility
that puzzled my eyes

and your saintly kindness
that spared animals
and all the quiet folk
this you shyly denied

and i remember your happiness
folded in golden laugher
and loving comfort
but that
i failed to provide

this life

with its morning wakings

and thirty thousand sun paths

smells like nothing

without the one

why strive for yellow dust

or blast holes into mountain sides

or sacrifice to understand

without the one

athena your gifts are gone to waste

yours too hera and artemis and others

the grapes rot on the ground 

because i neglected your shrine

, you sea foamed swan,

i did not bleed your dove

or worship properly, love

too much i obsessed
over flesh
or manner
so little i felt
through bone
or shadow
to reckon
your stare's trajectory

too much i crowded
your face
and milky knee
so little i considered
the backward tears
or numb thoughts
mobbing your mentality

a materialist i
made this chest
all surface
lidless
and strapped hard
with pearly past
concealed and buried
what would end me

three months
when close my eyes
pale hands still in mine
dark hair frantic
down slope of arm
citrine iris ghosting
torn gibbous moon
and all heavy desire
half-sunk
in nearby silt

people say
older, experienced people
say don't be angry
or afraid
or collapse into
woman's concerned arms

don't stray into trees
or run fast
or crawl

just be
the middle
be invisible
golden haze
detached
immoral as cloud

to cling to dead
whip the sea
raze the woods
leap infinity
lunatic love

that's wrong?