the air is filled
with a stagnancy of
pungent reminders
in stale reticence
as the pale moon
fillibusters across
the gentle bruising
of morning’s fury
a chalkdust phantom
glaring muddily in
hazy cerulean restraint

a bitterness washes
across the tentative
skyline of concrete
insignificance clawing
desperate for one
glorious moment in
her unblinking gaze
before being swallowed
whole in this unholy
pit of unrepentant sins
boiling in asphalt decay

i sit in a patch of
nighttime left to lament
the lingering lash of
false sentimentalities
my arms aching from
remaining locked in
the shape of another her
who gleefully played in
the salted soil of
sublime madnesses only to
flee before seeing if any
seed took root in the
mutated malaise of this
ever oscillating toxicity

the sparrows scream
an idiotic dirge for
the death of dream in
a suffusion of sunshine
illuminating only the
ugliness teeming just
under the surface of
this sleeping city
where the coffee has
hints of cyanide in
lipstick smears left
like bloodstains on
the rim of a dusty mug