Xanadu
 

The mind drips just as paint dries Slowly But it does not curl It does not curse My mind morphs to fuchsia-purple Yours melts to meringue-yellow An orange-red bed with sheer pink walls Stands lurid where others fall My dreamy, clean, bone-white colors Your perfect black, in between the others Those morose pose light spawns from three; simply, “The white light from red, blue, and green” But these are words of the dead For what we have now, they have shed Defining our colors be

The street light illuminates the two lines that never touch. As they run from east to west, they ordered me to stay on my side. They instructed me to keep my eyes on the road. I listened, but the drunk man coming straight for me did not.

He left. His love, once present, now burrowed into the ground like a squirrel at night, resting its body. Or preserving its food. He said Don’t worry, my kit. Everything will be okay. If you look straight you might not see me. Glance up or down. But don’t dwell. Like the seeds, his shell was submerged in soil. Frozen like winter water, leaving the squirrel to struggle to retrieve its lifeline. Burrows were closed, protected. Food once gifted by nature, returned. The squirrel