This Time Imperfect

We held hands on the last night on earth.

Our mouths filled with dust,

we kissed in the fields and under trees,

screaming like dogs,

bleeding dark into the leaves.

It was empty on the edge of town

but we knew

everyone floated along the bottom of the river.

So we walked through the waste

where the road curved into the sea

and the shattered seasons lay,

and the bitter smell of burning

was on you like a disease.

In our cancer of passion you said,

"Death is a midnight runner."

The sky had come crashing down

like the news of an intimate suicide.

We picked up the shards

and formed them into shapes of stars

that wore like an antique wedding dress.

The echoes of the past broke the hearts of the unborn

as the ferris wheel silently slowed to a stop.

The few insects skittered away

in hopes of a better pastime.

I kissed you at the apex of the maelstrom

and asked if you would accompany me in a quick fall,

but you made me realize that

my ticket wasn't good for two.

I rode alone.

You said, "The cinders are falling like snow."

There is poetry in despair,

and we sang with unrivaled beauty,

bitter elegies of savagery and eloquence.

Of blue and grey.

Strange, we ran down desperate streets

and carved our names in the flesh of the city.

The sun has stagnated

somewhere beyond the rim of the horizon

and the darkness is a mystery of curves and lines.

Still, we lay under the emptiness

and drifted slowly outward,

and somewhere in the wilderness we found salvation

scratched into the earth like a message.

I cannot leave here, I cannot stay

Forever haunted, more than afraid

Asphyxiate on words I would say

I'm drawn to a blackened sky as I turn blue

There are no flowers, no, not this time

There will be no angels gracing the lines,

just these stark words I find

I'd show a smile but I'm too weak

I'd share with you, could I only speak,

just how much this hurts me

I cannot stay here, I cannot leave

Just like all I loved, I'm make-believe

Imagined heart, I disappear

Seems... no one will appear here and make me real

There are no flowers, no, not this time

There will be no angels gracing the lines,

just these stark words I find

I'd show a smile but I'm too weak

I'd share with you, could I only speak,

just how much this hurts me

I'd tell you how it haunts me

I'd tell you how it haunts me

Cuts through my day and sinks into my dreams

I'd tell you how it haunts me

Cuts through my day and sinks into my dreams

You don't care that it haunts me

There are no flowers, no, not this time

There will be no angels gracing the lines,

just these stark words I find

I'd show a smile but I'm too weak

I'd share with you, could I only speak,

just how much this hurts me

just how much this hurts me

Just how much you...

---fin---