I corner the shadows of a cold heart
in a flesh coffin. Run crazy, run free,
by carefully folded reason twisted
into the paisley of the crooked jacket.

She is a creature of peonies and pansies
of hurricanes suffered like iced cream
in a blizzard. I water her, like dying flowers
on the crisp and cracking back edge
of a droughty late summer’s day.

I release the rays of light from her dead eyes
into the wilds of a lost mind. Wait raucous, wait shackled,
by the chaotic ruffle of irrationality’s winding
palsy of a broken woman’s faceless face.

She is a creature of clay and concrete
of rented folding chairs suffered like yesterday’s news
in a dust devil. I order her, like a cheap wedding
on the muddy and sinking frong side
of a flooding little early summer’s day.

I remember the dust between the light of her gray dreams
falling toward the civility of her last hours. Break hard, shatter
in the twisted calm of sweet sad entropy
– the cold sickness of cruel denial, promise and a love unkind.