clean up after your dog or face ticket & fine

“untitled #18 (4:56 AM)”

let the old dog sniff

your hand again,

let him grunt and fall asleep

let the ghostly drifters

stir their pots, and

sallow voices wake the meek

let the moonlight

roll away at dawn and

cast spent bellows to the sky

let strangers' eyes

fall on you idly while

dead leaves sway with the tide

let corpses lie 

along the beach, their

ashes scattered in the wind

as sunshine creeps

into your mind; the orange

lamplight to warm your skin

"young”

sometimes i forget how 

young we are–

dry throats, dry eyes

piled into your car;

held to so many fires,

waterlines up and 

down our faces

our spirits heavy with

A few others, young 

forever as we’ll never 

be– their voices still call 

to us, though they’ve 

lost their color and 

begun slowly to fade

the years have grown

much shorter; the long

ones hardly remembered,

past passions gone

without a trace

for that which consumes

all swallows also itself;

time cast off into the

great black nothing

but tonight, your bright

eyes still look so young

for all my twenty years

here, and your twenty-one