Ashpan.

We wore our shoplifted morals
on our very backs.
Shirts stained in lust and
starry-eyed revelation plain.
Lost in odes to obscenity
and vulgar light in boxcars
to Ocean.

Fake wisdom chainsmoked
and chained up pressed
to the radiator, burned.
Seventeen looked twentytwo
and felt about a hundred
But danced like we were
young again in the ethereal
glory of the night.
But the nights turned to
minutia as we packed
Luggage filled with memories
on an outbound train to
Adulthood and Adolescence
was left waiting for you
by the tracks.

Trains trains trains
life and love gone flying
by at a mile a second
and the seconds are precious
and the miles are precious
and all the precious miles
and minutes still fly fly fly
speeding on train tracks
and we wave as friends become
blurred faces waving back
from portholes zipping
in opposite directions
and we becomes I and you
and I don’t quite know you anymore.


And this used to be beautiful:
Writing gibberish on
our arms and legs
when we ran out of paper
sleepless nights pouring
forth beautiful poetry
and utter catastrophe
twinkle-eyed laughing
all the same in acceptance.
Driving streetcars through
Los Angeles to go get high
at the top of the world
and drink coffee that
tastes like Christmas.
Summernight shamblings
and skinny dipping
and kissing caressing
ashamed of nothing in acceptance.
Learning that peace
is only a word
until love breathes
life into its
lungs and that we could
breathe with each other
in acceptance.

But our kindred fire
flickered and roared
only to flicker again.
sunken embers haunting
fingertips reaching,
but too far now to
ever touch again.
Charred and depleted,
flying in the tumult
of cyclone wind,
Memories stripped bare
and standing blasted by
the sands of time until
smooth and unrecognizable
they fade from our minds
Ashen shadows of smoke
from locomotive top-hats
chugging endlessly onward
to opposite stations.

21 October 201o