Sweet roads leak fears silk clears, soft touch sweeping
     from us winter’s crush as bitter whispers
     near, heat speaking of what wind does to men
     who meet where healing ends, where words and wounds

                    taste of burnt almonds, where desire drives home
                         its pale indifference to love, where clenched
                         fists hit toward an ideal we each so

sorely secretly feel we will never
     be able to reach, above that haze, where
     pain and pavement taste of tears spilled out in
     final snowfall’s slo-mo’d haste, when our cold

                    kisses leave and a stalling of breath falls
                         to powdered ground where our thirst led our tongues
                         to sound, its lush depths enough to swallow

any hand so careless as to entrust
     caution to a place where fallen angels
     land, down to the last of the laudanum,
     I crash, calling out to him, craving to

                    understand what my wandering numbs, why
                         it is I no longer can feel, why I
                         no longer can even imagine my

being with one of them, ever having
     a husband, let alone a companion,
     how I came to be so intolerant
     of what crawling marauder my talent

                    summoned into me, taking ev’rything
                         as I licked an intersection, seeking
                         to kick this habit of self-expression

my soul in its shadowless longing lost
     in a storm of contradictions, wanting,
     no matter the cost, to impress him, this
     vocation of mine our home’s breaking turned

                    to an addiction, pain the medium
                         painting our damnation, stretched canvas and
                         tight khaki tearing, pants dropping as to

bruised knees we found our Selves falling, two fools
     mistaking oblivion for our true
     calling, no gates of paradise thrown wide
     open, just two lonely parasites shown

                    out when our host glimpsed what damage our love
                         did to its garden, heaven closed to those
                         whose stone hearts have never been human, we

exiled poets who perform misery
     for a pittance, living its incision
     solitude widens, crying shattering
     silence as like them, I exhaust passion,

                    crossing an uncaring world to a place
                         where fallen angels land, down to the last
                         of the laudanum, asking now for god’s

pardon with lips parched from begging to be
     loved again, to be reunited with
     him, clay crumbling from Cain wanting to hold
     Adam, to reclaim what earth took from me.