the last living smile

many years from now
when shyness is the greatest of virtues
and skepticism the license
to live

your eyes will come up over the ledge
of some old tome so heavy
in your hands

in a bare reading room
in the last living library
against the ticking
muffling the heart of
this city

and ask me
out from under the skein of our technocracy
what is goodwill?

and like a sun just risen
above any horizon
i will decorate the room
your face

will decorate
the room
my face

with the ancient
 smile

Journal # 10.08.2016

This morning I found myself splashed across the walls like water. This morning I woke from a nightmare being hunted by a man with a shotgun. Before dawn I am docile and careless, the sheets you tore up and me within them, before you left for your job and an eighteen wheeler and ten thousand gallons of oil. If only I can gather my self and my focus, today, the cell phone my natural enemy flat-backed on the dresser. This morning I shower and untangle my hair. I wanna good cut, I wanna change, I wanna punk it out with a streak of black and some sharpened angular curled tight at the nape of my neck in the back. The necklace my friend gave me several years ago, the silver icon hangs just below the the new one on the thinner chain, the hanging dove I got to remember my own ancient history. The light comes up blue in the city around me, loyalty and new love arises in me and I don't know how to handle it. How can I fall in love again without fear? I cannot withstand another fall from great heights. A burgeoning skepticism clings to the edges, the water mark, and won't wash away down the drain. I wanna live is all i know anymore... i wanna live or there's nothing left.