Opus

Reverie

You spill poetry
from around the edges of your shoulders
the cracks on your lips
and the pores on your thighs that breathes euphoria in
and out, and in, and out
on midnight's edge, stumbling over silver tragedies
into a sea of stars.
You are a city-child, bred in cobwebs,
street lights and melancholia,
train sounds and smoke rings and gentle kisses
from lonely men leaning against elevators.

I long to go home, a home recalled
on the other side of the river
that has been swept away in thunderstorms,
and wars.
All that is left, is unshed tears and a rain-soaked body.
We are a divided lot, but I shall return.
I shall return as a man, a woman, and a child,
as waves in the water that sweep against fisherwomen's feet.
Or perhaps as a bird,
as the dead poets have returned
again and again and again.

You daydream about paper planes and asteroids,
fire engines and strange women with
liquor washed mouths.
I sing in the night of madmen, whose faces touch the fingers of their lovers in shunned silence
to revere the ecstasy of homecoming.
A man, woman, and a child -
three black birds against the sky.

You are made from chaos, sugar and nicotine
and reek of moondust and starlight.

When you die, dreaming of the ocean
I'll bury you in lilac under the moon with a cigarette and a love poem
and a springflower shall grow out of your head.