i pick through
multicolored gravel
your soulscatter
gleaming voraciously
aquarium rocks
in illusionary
shades of truth
as i scrabble
to reform the image
of stolen moments
sequestered in
springtime follies
beneath the wisteria
in the sodden demise
of yesterday’s wonder

tucking away stones
enhanced with heartglimmer
laying by the oceanic
realm of receding waves
overpopulated by the
corpses of dreamers
swaying as sullen seaweed
in a lightless tomb of
incongruent currents
leading downdowndown to
a hell we tirelessly etch
in the faded echos of
eternities we could never
quite manage to fathom

still my eyes open as
my heart hammers a dirge
the birdsong mimics faintly
a cacophony of unwhispered
prayers to the emptiness
reflected in hazel distress
a sodden code in crimson
tap tap tapping out odes
to the reckless nature of
polarity as it applies
to the unreturned adorations
contained in the hollow
skull of a would be poet
ground slowly to coarse gravel