Low Sky

What did you say?  We have been walking for hours
beneath downtown lights
pockets empty
a second night in a row and I should
have your name by now.  I don't.

Was it good for you?  My head is still
while the orange and florescent office whites
lighting office blocks
slide by, head craned, thoughts hung
dead behind my glass eyes,
tongue lolled and thick in my mouth.

What did you say?  I know
I should know, but the sky is so close,
starless, I can smell the ocean
up there threatening to come down and
I would be afraid of getting wet
if I wasn't already still.

Was it good for you?  Your arm around my shoulders
feels brand new and if I wasn't so encased
in this damn cotton tee I could
fall into you all over again the way
sail fish do when the waves are high and
chopping.

Somewhere up there
radio towers are blinking
warnings to the street's rise and fall,
buoys along our shipping lane.  Do you want to spend
the night?  My body twitches at the end of it's rope.
There is laughter coming

out from where your mouth ends and
my ear lobe begins.  Can you taste it, I think it's going to rain.
The glass in my head blows apart
connected in an instant to every tube and bulb
overhead and rains starshine on the concrete
and I am thirsty as hell
all over again.  Cracked and spilling.

We have been walking for hours and
the sky is fallen.
Come with me, I know a place
where we can swim.

Rejoinder

Separation anxiety is
    step one.
             Step two is
                      howling at the sun.
         Step three is not listed, but
  step four is understanding
what you are. And really
really really
                                I just wish I knew.

More than that,
more than all of it,
    step five is the tricky part

   the part beyond understanding that
toes the ocean and tests the temperature
              and says "fuck it, let's go"
                    in the gap where you knew
                          you already knew
                              and were

                            killing time.

         Step five
              is

   the burner.  Fire, walk with me
   the you inside that lives at all points
   West and the Hollywood is beautiful
   enough when  you know
   you live on the corner of Mulholland
   and Velvet.  Really though,

        step five
                is

                    bliss.  The tooth shining
                          knife wiping nonsense
                                    of being's justification
                                             in little little tiny fucking words

                   in the thin hours of day break.

Vapors.  And paper bags.  And the shakes
that let you know you are still animal.  And sometimes
human.

Joineder

Some day I am going to dissociate
sex and violence and I will wake up
without new scars and be able to love
my own skin, but til then
being with you
will still be
defcon 1