The garden rises from the river, swallows up my pasty feet, and climbs my belly with a flower, claws as sharp as scent is sweet.

Escaping to my bedroom, I hide in my retreat, and keep the window half ajar to flavor my defeat.

From every frame and gutter, the edges come to bleed. Down in the river garden, the leaves and ripples feed.

We make excuses for our love, for any chance to sit beside or qualify another ride into the city’s heart;

we are the blood, the pulse, the red and present danger, underneath and lingering in lingerie, and glassy irises, stones in hand,

a parallel refraction splits in prisms from our diamond gaze, unbreakable, save for the brief and soft together that closed our eyes.

I’ve never been good with subtlety, far better I play outside your window, or ride across the country just to hold your hand, send you a dozen roses before we even met in the flesh, or save you from death, for any less than that is lost and you’ll never know my foolery, daft attempts at Hollywood, ’cause someone sold me subtlety.

Life is full of tempered souls, but I will not be one. Spend too long in solder roles, and see what you become;

rules enclose as skin to bones, but I will not succumb, pander to a paler world, and wonder where it’s gone.

How is it in the mortal night we find such black reflection, and come to question our complexion by the dying light?

Throughout the giddy glow of day we play in blue refraction, and bright distractions blind our actions till the shying ray.

Exhausted by denial we crawl with coiled tails, and cease upon the meaty pile where red things go to pale.

Upon the heap of death, we reach for one last time, in hope that we’re not just a step for other souls to climb.

For surely there’s salvation? And surely there’s a line? Somewhere within these desperate words I’m digging for divine.