telescopes for two

How you hailed the tottering dawn,
beating your hands
smooth of shakes
and balance, damp
with evidence in envelopes sewn
on strips of air;

Curled up in the corner
of a mullock heap,
in the oven
of a drunken deity,
you say "Beginnings!"
like you're the first one to ever link
revelations to her plastic charms.

You're not;
Stooping to swallow pips
and shrug in adenoids, they came,
thrilled the letters in my lungs
to ash, complimentary
coastal damp
as when I
hung his
on the line
thick
with night and soft at the edges;

as if words left their eyes sick and sore
of telescopes in the shape of pens.

I didn't know how long to wait,
so I exchanged it all for x-ray vision
and firewood,
three dollars in a slot
for silence

[leave
my soul
alone]

and carried you out in a golf-buggied night,
losing verbs
across the biggest bumps
I could find.