Neaptide, Pepper-Bloom.

it's afternoon. 
no, it's midnight
and your hands don't reach out from postcards that once were pretty enough to make me weep in personal silence. 
they're filling in all green places with long tall houses
and the horses have all gone home
and the photographs won't sing tonight
wasn't it long and hard, the road of orgy, pestilence?

it's a monday. it's always a monday.
and there's always a stage
for the lady
and for the master

those weren't happy times and neither are these
black cars wait in silence
and bullets and bulldozers wait in silence
and tombs of love and hate 
have much to do
with the chimneys that never were
and petticoats with flowers. and real flowers too. 

do i remember the spiders that weave golden webs in guts of heart?
do you remember the waves of conditioned mercy as they smashed our lighthouse?
there's a bit of laughter stuck at the edges. look.
don't wipe it off
for the women from Arabian Nights will be sad,
very sad,
if you do.
i can almost hear their maroon sobs break on soft white shores
as parrots carry the last song of the world in their beaks 
and fly through the history of solitude 
to perish in strange darkness

i must carry an umbrella to the mortuaries before they trump all blankness
between eyes that whisper and tides that don't;
i must awake to see the night on fire
and the hallways awash with blood 
of sailors bitten by the ghosts of moonlight, 
by uncrossed signals, 
by broken skulls of wishing-wells,
by shadows of tigers that seek to join all unbearable dots
and by everything else that don the robes of the wizard
who lived on stale turnips
and on hallowed throbs
of a withered, unwelcome dawn. 

it's pure monstrosity
dreams prepare for the final Sabbath 
lips yearn for shoulders that ever were
weary soldiers yearn for the nurses of sundown to spread their wings and legs 
and roses stick to frames of decay.

there's a room where only you can enter
in there there's this huge candle, burning, for you 
to hug it and cry as it melts
it's a carnival.
it's beautiful.