Though you only dream
Of senior citizens bathing in the rain
That you will someday be
And have always been repulsed by the sweet smelling girlboys
Standing tall at the gates
Unknowing of their doom
You smile
Always smiling
Nothing will ever change
Not that way

So Maybe you do not want to discuss the last breath
(I scream without explanation)
And this, too, shall pass
As it always has passed
If you want to discuss it or not
Pleasant fantasies ARE in our inventory
And for our delight
Even though continued ware is still imminent
Without noticing such tragedies
We speak lines as if from old Broadway songs
To explain our obsessions
And try to look as if we enjoy this game

You gradually learn to love your body gently
As if you were being graded
We could each pretend to be someone else
If this helps
Perhaps priestly delights
Can settle
But we did promise to understand
The same
Even as we do not speak of it
We roll up our sleeves
And defy all odds
That we would not survive
You read me a list of possible perversions
Certainly the programmers of pleasure
Make fun of such shy lovers
Listening to the bedsprings howl
Surely we knew that this magic would happen
That our hearts would try to tame the acid rain
While pretending to be someone else

If you must
Reach for the music
As one only can in the morning
Dance with your clothes on
With such a bashful wiggle
If you must
Alone in your robin ruined nest
Then when finished
You will ask for a cigarette
Only lonely people
Want the jazz age with a violinist
Who is having trouble breathing
Because of too much smoking
But why should a violinist need to breathe?

Still
You don't seem to care
That I want your out-of-date hair styles
Nor that I can't dance
But often only pretend to pretend to be happy
Which does keep my voice from trembling
I want you to touch my lips
You will hear a symphony
I believe
Anything of value is magic
And without explanation

Nothing ever changes
In this world of constant change
While we agree on little
And think we agree on everything
We are forever changing
As the moment comes
Like it or not
Close your eyes
Ride the coaster through its tracks
And speak in tongues
While the city burns around us

One learns to love even death
If there is no choice
You can sail off the earth's end
If you must

Look what winter has fiercely done to the daisies
the old man's tree swing
Once a cathedral for his raindance
Now a roosting place for birds

Taste me
Do it today
Not tomorrow
Without fearing the darkness
We have been here before
Deafened by Freud's dreams
Don't let me love you from a distance
Without crying
For this isn't love
Swim in the guns and butter
Tangled in your hair
We create an embrace and fall into it
While the silent crocodiles begin to weep
Circling for the kill
Oh, those piercing eyes.

As for mercy in the morning
The evening is too late
I embrace for the worst
Can you still pretend that you are still yourself
Shamelessly seeking such mercy
In the black ink of old newspaper clippings?
I can blame it on the night
For then it doesn't matter
But this gift isn't yours to give
Touch my sounds
The guttural rolls of my throat
The dripping girgles of my inabilities
And yet you insist on walking in your sleep
through these wonders
In this strange world
Again

Show me your wings
And I will show you my breath
Your dreamer predicted this
Hold my hand and we will fly
Tell me that you love me in the morning
For the evening is still too late
I smell your strange perfume on my breath
Always dreaming
Before breathing

Fear the spirits of wealth
For it's a trap
Fill me with sorrow
And I will sing you a song
Listen to the faucet drip
Before it's too late

Do it slowly
Methodically
While death can still be laughed at
And not peck at our swing
Pleasure and pain seem to be our journey
But we can't wait
Tie your dreams to the tail of a kite
And jump from the ledge
I lost my name in the woods in the pile of moss
And can't fly
As a stack of lightening cut branches
Hide my broken wings

I dream you will leave
Old dreams
But I must fearlessly speak to you of love
Silently I sing to you
As the quiet descent of a falling star
Every time
Is always the first
No one else cares
But we try to see
The second time
In the arena of old movie scripts
The third time
And still no sound
Allow me to make you an offer
Recite a line
Forgive those who have wronged us
The fourth time
No sound
But the pecking of the birds at the empty old man's swing
The world seems so new in his absence

Among the vacant robin nests
Wisps of smoke
Roll across the scape
Setting me on fire
To the tune of the gentle minuet
We had forgotten each other
Forgotten how to sing
And now there is so little time..