Turn on the campfire
As you explode
With burning verbs.
I keep my adjectives covered
As I sip my ginseng tea.
You are always wrong
That's why I love you so
Hoping you'll one day be right
Or at least agree.
The fire crackers of tear-scarred cords
Won't give me that
But the life is magic Mars
Under ballroom maple leaves
To be recoiled so,
Brought to maximum separation
Like a serpent's trick
To shed its ash, for the mushroom
Mind to shoegaze
And every crow across infinity to see.
Now we get to learn another way
Under dark and luminous skies.
Our eyes have drawn this map before
Like star gold is prize
And glittering lights guidance
Not the loving void.
It's on us, my dearest one
To reject whole cloth the common
And still spend time in communion
With each other's deepest wounds.
A bird looks down in the darkness
Wondering what we'll do.
Will we slug back shots of Jack
In lieu of slugging each to other
Or are they, in some way, the same?
We are too, apparently, tho the sis cam
Testifies in open court that can't be true.
We wipe our deepest frowns at any rate
Off our smiles, go on like hearts don't break
And the spirit eaves don't suffer for our racket,
As if we finally agree
To let disagreement be okay
But it never is, as we both secretly seethe.
You want your cry to heaven to get past
The neighborhood, I get it
And you want to be heard
By more than numbed skulled me
But there's no trick machinery
To get those birds back into the trees.
They just go there when you're no longer looking
Many years later, sometimes, it seems,
When you think of it at all it's just how
Stupid you were, but their mouths are full
Of the song of your praise
For all you allowed yourself to feel
Without veering your eye or changing
Your mind, what the wind does continually
To these would-be obstinate birds
Who wouldn't know what love was at all
Without their nests safecracked for sport.
