New Year’s Eve

New Year’s Eve

I remember the passing line between was and is

Crossing within the borders of a kiss

Static and ecstatic fumbled enigmatic

Come on drip me tragic  

All about this parking lot of marked-up memories

Slashed tires and revving engines throttling to go

Strap the grip of a clutch caution in the slip

Never in the let go always in the innuendo  

Fires bombing at midnight cursing by the dawn

Thorns for the petals stitched bodies belong

Linked in mute and handcuffed in dispute

Of caverns dark and morning’s spark  

To illuminate the beauty marks of tattoos and monthly scars

Missing links and country bars of pickup-truck gun racks

Steeple-obtuse angle pitched ceiling stained-glass window maps

Ways to go and closet mirrors, looking in and autumn delivers promises of winter 

New Orleans calls like a booze hound howling all night long

Remember nothing, never lived or sang, just a memory of absence clangs

Outside the doorway like a cattle triangle of you, me and what will never be

Country thistle and the missiles bombed on Gaza like Jesus  

I miss the painted streets; the highway aches to be held

The neutral ground full of bloody wrecks, the sidelines reek of sex

The gawkers slow-stare at the bodies, death and life, left and right

Middle and the outside forgotten and the crimes  

Nothing but the real, the hearts charred in incinerated masterpieces

Oiled engines combusting in the thrashes

Patience like eagles falling to the earth, talons crossing and death right on the verge

Separate before the ground, cannot prove that love and war do not make the same sounds 

I always wanted to see you in an evening gown

Dressed up like New Year’s Eve, fabric of a haughty life

Children with a sitter and the night all to ourselves

As if America had the hour, wild for the kiss 

You, me, time, passing the line between was and is