I was cold, you made a fire.
The logs crackled like applause
while you played your guitar
and sang to me songs of love
of broken roads and crossed stars;
with every note I loved you more.

You brought me flowers-
no, in my mind you did,
and that was all that really mattered.
I kept them pressed neatly
between Byron, Keats, and Shelly
and the lines that made up you.

You said that you had always loved me
and that I was the only one,
but I didn't really listen,
I only heard what I wanted
instead of what was important,
your use of past tense regarding me.

I was wrong, I was wrong,
I made you grander than what you are.
I built you up in my mind.
I hid your flaws in the shadows
and let the rest of you shine far too brightly.
I saw exactly what I wanted to see.

I was wrong to make more of you
than what was really there,
but my heart believed in the mirage.

That song you sang to me
has turned to ashes in my ears.
It's my fault for trusting you.
The petals wilted upon reflection,
and in this harsh new light
all the words I used to love
are now an empty page.

You are not a song,
you are not a sonnet,
you are just a man

and I was wrong
but I believed in you.

     In the summertime, he keeps the windows open to let the breeze in. He hears the ghost train nightly passing by from his bed, yet it is not the steam whistle that keeps him awake. It is not the chug of the engine firing fuel to pull its weight. It is not the thought of the dead that frighten him so, nor the phantasmagorical events that would unfold during the night. It is the sound of the chains as they rattle accusingly on the iron rails.

ClickClackClickClackClickClack.
Two coins on your eyes for my thoughts…

     Sentimental, hateful memories of a young boy, and all that he wanted was his grandfather's watch, passed down from his father's father, attached to a chain worn in his breast pocket. How he coveted it, that loud TickTickTick. How he would steal it, just for a minute, just to hold it and pretend that it was his, considering the possibility of never giving it back. He thought he would rather die tomorrow than let go.

     His momma said when he was small that there were no such things as ghosts or ghosts trains for that matter, but she didn't understand, not like he did. His grandfather told him the truth over hot chocolate, that the dead visited the living and the tracks behind their house was a convenient way to travel. But his momma didn't believe, or pretended not to, so she never could understand.

TickTickTick
Two coins on your eyes for my thoughts…

     She never heard how the train in the distance sounds like a gasping breath. She could never know that he wakes from sleep at 4:00 am with the low, rumble like thunder of the train in the distance and the ClickClackClickClack of the chain on rails like a cold metal heart beat. Nor could she ever know the Pavlovian way he takes her father's watch from the bedside table drawer, checks the time, winds it up for the day, dips his kerchief in alcohol and meticulously wipes the watch clean.

Two coins on your eyes...
     
     He wakes with a start at the sound of the train. The face on the watch in the drawer seems to scream. It TickTickTicks so loud, so alive (more than he) but it always bleeds before dawn, and he resents the dead as he goes about his day, weary from the weight of his chains.

^{snap
b  r  e  a  k}

razor blade skin
a psychopathy casing
ego and entitlement
grasping fingers
take at will
steal to own
misogynistic
masochist

_{snap
b   r   e   a   k}

rage driven
war flavored
flashbacks
too much beer
testosterone
and bullet sweat
too much violence
too far gone

snap
b    r    e    a    k

you are poison
and iron
rending with shrapnel
after the violence
bloody hands
in the silence
out damn spot
no never

snap
b     r     e     a     k

_{dear god, what have you done?}

You used to tell her she had bird bones -
it was only a joke,
but you would hold her tightly
so she could not fly away.

Now you carry starlings in your pockets
to feel their little hearts
fluttering like hers did
when you lay your head upon her chest;
beating the way yours did,
before she flew away with it,
like you always knew she would.

Tonight you are haunted
by a swan with a broken neck.
It's just a dream,
but you know it's her...
And you're frightened as hell
at how god damn beautiful
she is in broken symmetry,

but you find relief in your fistfuls of feathers.

           Vamp for the worlds ending
  with gilt lashes sharpened for the killing.

   Traipse drunkenly in steel-toed slippers,
        inhale spring and exhale winter.

         Trace epigrams upon the man,
          draw epitaphs into the sand;

            all hail your scarlet fever.