My My My Dear

This haunted place, I keep a room

A pied-à-terre, a pharaoh's tomb

The cantos of my New York years

A scribe in ink that disappears

The autumn leaves that store

The glow of summer then

Invite the snow

It's five o'clock, the sky is dark

The blinds are drawn

The dogs all bark

The bending pitch of siren choir

The cries to find

A crime, a fire

The seeds of hope I throw across the sea

Are kissed before they're tossed

Into the world like random prayers

To gods who don't exist or care

But some find soil and grow and bloom

In fields I find when I've consumed

Too many beers and gotten lost

I speak your name when they are tossed

My, my, my dear, you've scoured the trash for flowers and sparks

That hide in ash

And walk them through the city walls past parking lots

Graveyards and malls

Where roads of dirt are stacked with stones, like skulls that bind the catacombs

Arranged into a shelter shade

To lay, low in

When we've escaped

Like Proserpina’s gift of rain

Wringing the sticks

Out of her mane