Empty Tri-Colored Bed, in memoriam.
No longer must I sleep so close to the edge of the bed, it now belongs all to me.
Sprawled out with my bruises, my right foot confused without the back of a knee to brush.
My sleeping mumbles are once again lost to the walls, the watchful posters, the eyes in the tree.
Empty bowls, discarded wrappers, the scent of pipe tobacco, pancakes, and pomade.
I cough more and more before sleep arrests my sad lungs. My earphones are wearing out and my windows rattle with each freight car.
The paranormal has become self-contained, less expressed, truer and darker than ever before.
The ghosts behind the door on the third floor, the old man on the third bridge, the three colors of our bed.
This is when I realize that all forty ounces of ashes were ever only mine.
I feed the green bottle with increasing fervor each hour, and the smoke plumes like a weary spectre,
So I keep the gold cap on tight while I lay awake and naked in the old stale two a.m., knowing what hovers in the cracks of reality.
And the shadows cast by slender branches become grudging, aching limbs just like mine,
And the wail of the train becomes the howling spirits in my ancient childhood forest.
I’ll wrap myself in my newfound colors, ‘til they bleed into my skin, slumber on the spin cycle.
Embers falling on my collarbones, volcanic ash growing gardens from my sheets, like the dormant slopes of my Plateau, my Cascades, my lonely grey skies -
The wind of evil spirits, the thunder mountain, the malevolent brother god who split open the hills to devour me whole, my hazel eyes and mossy feet.
I was born to a place cursed by generations, bathed in fire and mud,
Where we have defined a thousand breeds of rain a hundred falls and winters and springs over-
Your oceans cannot understand me, your oil spill of a heart does not hear anything I have to say.
The firs and the palms lose each other in violent translation.
