Prehistory

When things go up in smoke

Prehistory

She lay there unbidden
thoughts of after and tomorrow
the emptiness of his lungs
beside her breath held
brief microcosms of death
the blackness of all thought
vaporific dreams lost

She lay there blind
to elongated afternoons
clouds held in place
by a long cigarette on the porch
by his infinite absence
by the mild breath of the wind
in their formless shapes she saw
the rumpled blanket as still as a fossil 
a cave painting from a time
when memory could not reach
that cigarette ash dwindling
with the sunset her lungs 
filled with something
something

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Here’s a moody poem for all you lost lovers out there. It’s been a tumultuous year so far at home and away. Bad dreams. Nightmares on the streets. Smoke and death overseas. Death. Taxes. It’s bloody Shakespeare out there, and I’m getting worn out. Sometime around 2:00 p.m. every day I seem to need a nap. Then more strange dreams. But I’ve been playing music and writing moody poems.

I just wrote an angry and crazed poem about war mongering. Those tragic events in Minnesota compelled me to speak out with some political poems — I’d say human ones — lately. But rather than unsettle you with some of my more profane shit, I figured I’d try a little lost romance to brighten your day. I’m nothing if not charitable.

Over the last year or so I hear much less from you all. Say hello when you can.

Are you tired, too?

Coda