April 27 : Fighting The Sky

Hammer-shaped thunderclouds
Preside singularly over rain dripped roads.
The pebbled black tar, soaked, holds tight to its chest
the living memory of a two-dimensional toad.
Pressed into the earth, with all the love of a passionate collector
driven over ferociously with all the pain-stained wheels
of a hundred steel monsters and garishly bright bicycles
soul squished into subservience under polished heels.

A hundred yards away
you lay
fighting the sky
with the might of an army
the size of a lie.

Grey roads lit up
with grimy neon lights
the city looks alive
(like a corpse, bright
under the shroud of the
prescient night and the
sinuous approaching dawn).
I sit, quiet, inured to your ragged breathing,
the sight of popping veins in your tightened fists
that inviolable look in your solipsistic eyes,
even your lurid words, acerbic to my ears.

And the maelstrom of the night
gathered her skirts about her, tight
grasping persistently in her slender fingers
the ephemeral skyline spread across an eternal horizon,
coming into focus with the first rays of light.

I watch over you as you writhe
I watch over as you cry.
I listen to your honest rants
And I listen as you lie.

Sometime when the still-damp roads
start filling up with dusty cars
zooming close and then further away
in the effulgent light of the early morning
you sigh.
And I pick you up in my weathered arms
silhouetted against the nebulous sky
I gently arrange your porcelain limbs
upon this tautly stretched car seat
your pristine (yet pallid) face looking up
your shaking hands unwilling to accept defeat.
I prise your stiffened fingers off my scarred arm
and slowly touch your face. The car groans and jerks,
and I have one hand upon the steering wheel
one upon your precious china-like cheek
your lashes, dampened into triangles of a grief
unknown to mankind, lower until you are asleep.
And we are ready to begin this journey again,
driving into the far horizon (of my eyes and your tortured soul).