Your heart bursts with birds and candlelight
and that murder goes on forever
a sea of feathers, a flock of wishes
what is scraped from the bottom of the well
has aged like fine wine
has hardened like your arteries
is weirdly perfect and terminal.
Your heart bursts with birds and
songs gone unheard and
fading from memory
feels like dreaming in reverse --
you watch all the colors wash away.
You watch the sun rise up
to swallow the stars.
You watch for signs pointing to tomorrow
and becoming your own lighthouse
cast a wide arm
sweep aside the sailors
try to pull her in again.
Sailors, astronomers, kings
have all wished
for a swelling sea of birds.

Five years and
five years on it's all
just hand after hand
full of restlessness.
Signals slide like
subway cars
along my bones and
take their toll,
all years just a ridership
bound for nowhere
and nothing
and null.
If I cannot conjure you by name
if I cannot call you from the shadows
if I cannot be heard
above the grinding, sparking rails
then I will find some way
to give your song to the starlight instead.
One day when you hear it
subliminal beneath the loudspeaker buzz
you will slide your hand into mine
and say goodbye to saying goodbye.
We did not arrive here together
but somehow, by accident,
we shall so depart.