long shadow lingers
baby I remember
when you were much taller than this.
Spread your blanket over
beds that never think of you anymore
how the sun used to shine!
yeah, it got in our eyes,
necks stretched, tilting up to that
beauty blue sky
an talk of green.
“I wanna have a trampoline
in the middle of the forest
and just jump through the trees.”
Words I could fill up on;
words I could hang from,
Now of course I’m all moonshine,
yellowed at the edges and
liquor in the middle, thick and bitter,
nothing better to do than make the monsters howl-
if fate had her way,
who knows where I’d be
(sleeping on a bench
waiting for my turn and a good meal probably
nicer than it sounds)
oh yes I used to be tall
when my shade-self was shorter
than the dreams I made and loved and ate
it comes in flashes now,
ends to ends to ends of my empires,
head in hands,
on a beached red boat
leaves brushing my face s I cried on the phone
to the devil.
Arms wrapped round
the best friend I’ll ever know
as he lost the only hope he had.
Standing on a cliff that doubled as a
hotel window,
the sweetness of the world
in my flesh-full, younger hands,
sounds of faraway
island of grace
coming through on the static.
All of it is gone, all of it
washed away,
stretched thin as a memory,
thin and long as my shadow today
in the dying light of tomorrow.