the evening streets are stitched together
with moments which once were
the consistency of thread
you
came out
from the red brick building
which we had threatened to tear down
and held your head
just so
at an angle to the evening
as tho the evening might somehow
come back at you in some soft
and slurry whisper
that is how you were
I watched
that same evening
bend and break away
the corners of some sharp heart
which lay within myself
I could not say
I love you,
yet
I wrote verses
only for you
slipping and sliding things
a bus thrusting itself
into the sad placenta of st. louis
and me
whelped
upon the gritty aborted streets
you know so well
there is an emptiness to the evening
which only lovers can tell
a silliness, one which
escapes the jealous eye
and hides itself
between that which I would say
and that which I would hide
and calls itself all that I would
rather keep inside
