Soft hush
a lilac hush,
spilling from heaven’s cufflinks.

Dust-throated wind,
draped in violet lace,
forgets how to whisper.

Once,
a petal kissed my wrist,
feather-light, sugar-spun.
(It melted before I could love it.)

Beneath the boughs
time folds like an origami swan.
A child presses footprints into fallen silk,
calls for lullabies.

Glittering
a secret only the butterflies know,
written in ultraviolet sighs.

Stay.
Stay.

But the season is shifting,
jacaranda knows no permanence.

A lilac hush
soft hush
dissolving into sky.

I had been sober for
awhile and was getting that
itch to drink.
I couldn't recall the
degradation and misery of
the last drunk a few months
earlier.

It was spring, and I was standing
outside of the flophouse, I was
staying at.
Just then, a big sunflower of
a woman walked by.
"Hi Jenny," I said.
We had a past.
Not much of one though.
It resembled a Dali painting that
had been soaking in the rain.

We ended up in a motel with a
bottle of Absinthe.
Jenny wasn't much of a drinker,
No problem, more for me.
Jenny wasn't much of a
conversationalist, and half-lit on
robust *****, neither was I.
I walked around the room talking
about Hemingway and Van Gogh,
Fitzgerald and Picasso.
Jenny wasn't interested in them.
She wanted me to score her some dope.

She said, "If you want this *****, you
will buy me an eight ball."
I didn't.
I wanted to write, but I was too drunk.
We wanted different things and neither
of us
found them that night.
And later at about 3 am when I got
up to ****, I could have sworn I saw the
picture of Van Gogh on the box of Absinthe
laughing.

Evening is on the take
The sun herself senses it
Her heat is slipping away
Eclipsed by cold, arctic tendrils
Rilling through the fragile geography
Earth is a strong fighter though
Able to restore itself in serene defiance
Light she brings to keep night in its place