Overhead as the moon cuts them out of the clouds

Veering vortices dance down to your face

Ephemeral winter’s hoary tentacles carve and shape you to their will

Stray words freeze in the space between us

Pygmalion’s icy cousin, I kiss you and am held fast

Hungry slush mouth meets ice tongue entwining me in its crystalline lattice

Enthralling me, pulling me in

Racing movie reel progression

Aurora Borealis, Crimson Solaris and Lunaris

Elongated prism lacerations flicker above us

Wind rushes by on its adventure to outrun the clock

Time drags on a cigarette

The air melts away

You fade back into rivulets of clay

Next time I’ll rip the light ecstatic

Next time I won’t be so cavalier

Next time there will be no thaw

I think of you from a frozen wasteland.

Snowflash blind walking icy crags at noon.

Legs of a monstrous millipede sliding through

alabaster earth towards the

undershadow of a mica strewn monolith

Swaddled in a sleeping bag of comforts

self-induced deafness to block out overwhelming zeitgeist

ego neuropathy so the day passes quickly

static snow on a Latin American tv.

The return seems a journey to the moon

Words around me expressing global views,

sounding like a ghost story of

prisoners, warriors and heroes enduring

tortures, horrors... wonders.

Truth told through grave's end senses

in a potter's field.

Flowers blossom on a tree

quickens my blood.

Their perfume bridges time until

I taste your next kiss.

gently pry open our bedroom blinds

crawl across the floor and

caress your body.

You sigh.

Humidity glistens and rivulets run towards shadow

in a postcoital lunar crosshatch.

Jealously, I study the crossword puzzle you have become.

The clues that I thought were so apparent

now leave me a letter short,

or too long.

The theme no longer falls into place after a few words.

I watch the white boxes move across

your legs to your breasts

then onto your face

as the black boxes I go down become an attempt

to recreate our earlier pleasure.

We watched the tentacles of night

pry open the oyster of day to reveal the moon.

The sweat of last nights rhythms becoming chilblains as a mental sea engulfs me.

Cold needles puncture me.

The waves of a theologians religious ecstasy revisit me

Trying to melt the icy world.

Boreas tendrils etch my mind sharper than the frozen rain.

An acid wash reminding me

Why I walk through this urban daguerreotype for you

Why I live this woodcut life

Imprinted behavior fading all questions

Into routine channels to occupy our time

It is not the Dionysian mysteries of which we partake that drowns me.

The grey-purple sky, now stenciled with skyscrapers

As the temperature drops,

Runs with tie dye colors.

I return to my Escher world

Dr. Zhivago to Lara.

Jagged puzzle contours fitting around pinwheel galaxies

reflected in a reedy marsh.

Waters shake apart, rushes quiver.

A thatched heat covers us even so

Clutching bedclothes

Wrapping our slick skin in sheets of netting

the trail seems clear ahead.

Perhaps she would find where this bifurcated path led.

The cairn at the fork in the road

overgrown with blood pinked wildflowers coiled

corkscrewed around stone.

A marker he should have understood

to gather the pieces.

Bitterness flows through pane cracks bringing mad sighing and singing insideout.

Blood-waned light reverse melting from the floor back into the window wastes

Refracting us.

Bending our bodies, thoughts, words

back to the afternoon

highlighting our skin scratches

tattoos representing our coupled bond

promises made in madness

symbols whose imprint can only be melted by a garnet poultice.

Ice trees beckon me outside.

The path they describe

that their brachiated arms scratch into the air

promises freedom.

Behind me, pages and cloth rustle

whispers of a pact renewed.

Lightning spears through quiet dawn reflections.

Zephyrus rides the blood-covered waves up to our house

billowing our curtains.

Naiads scream and moan at this intrusion.

Their cries carry inside shaking us from fever dreams.

The storm-spattered window mimics my skin.

Night sweats prickle my body.

As I turn to kiss your lips

Tatterdemalion shadows slither across the floor

writhing wraith tentacles raise to caress your body.

Rumbling, pattering, crackling

Sighing, moaning, creaking

A flash of ecstatic pain reflects in your eyes.

Light contorts its way around us.

The bathroom door beckons us to wash away each others fears.