Smudged ink lines running down your dress. Pockets too big for cancer. Wicked women prowling up and down the alleyways and staircases. Locked fists open up for change. Mellow music floats down from above. We washed our hair with wisdom, shook all the rattlesnakes out. The demons we carried with us packed up and left when our thoughts became opaque to them. Ancient masters up-staging open-air family reunions. We locked our bicycles to the porchlight and went around back to see what was going on. Crimson kings kissing caterpillar queens. Cool clock faces wet with tears. Tiny lies multiplied. Sword-swallowing infants split open while practicing. Shocked sockets dancing, keys dangling from our necks. Ulysses with a thorny crown. Dogs sniffed at our dead bodies. Miles of oxygen gone for the highway. Millions of people hungry in the streets, searching for some kind of pain to remind them. Doorways open and shut on their own. Men with white hair and fishermen or sailor hats. Tangled lions stuck to pricker bushes. They were trying to rob us. It serves them right. Human bones carried as torches. Cascading mistakes like a waterfall. You came to me to cool your hair. In my lake. When I went down. Too many times. Ice cold kisses. Elements we didn’t learn about in highschool. Space station link-ups. I knew you were one of them. I always know. Tomorrow is yearning, its arms wide open waiting for us. Wet hair. Filigree initials. Men with thick, dirty fingernails. Georgie casually called to us. She asked us where we were going, said she would come too. Gimme a little somethin more, babe. I ain’t got no use cryin. All them sad yesterdays gone left me here. Two stab wounds and a beer. Opened up on either side. Milk flows out of one, honey the other. Bees circle round. The dance of the bears upon awakening. The sweet sound of Summer’s last romantic death. Bring it on. Be here with me when you can. And when you can’t, I still can. The last dregs of what once could have gotten us drunk off our asses. Shots taken in silence. Camera phones clicking like insects, a million of them around us. Tore our clothes off. Took us over yonder. Chemical mixtures combusting in the fireplace. It should have been us. All over yellow socks. Mismatched lines delivered haphazardly on the subway platform and in the car. Casual fleeting glances looked up like doves. A solid chunk of ice falling down from a plane. A slick rock I stand upon to serenade you, slipping into the void once more. Velvet cushions in your room. The thick sweet smell of love dismembered. Old women laugh. Old men weeping. Small children with socks on and birds landing in their hands to eat and drink of their blood. Virgin births passed around like exotic alcohol. Drunk on the perfumes of whores. Terror multiplied. Kingfishers crying out from their wire perch above the locks. Their heads a-bobbing. The oldest working elevator in Baltimore. Washed up police sergeants beating the billy clubs against trash cans like metal skulls, wonders where the fire went. Folksingers fleeing the city, looking for better times. Establishments brought to dust and ruin. Kids singing in a chorus, “Look what we did, look what we did.”