October

Oh October, you wilesome one. I love you. I love the smell of you. I love being next to you and holding your hand. You love me, as I love you. We are dying, aren't we? The leaves are swirling around me in waves. You hold me in your arms and kiss me. You are all warm colors and cold air blasting, all rage and glorious sunsets. I throw out my arms in the night to hold you close. I would touch your stars, if I could only reach. My arms are not long enough. Your twisted empty trees and olive branches burning all call to me softly, whispering sweet everythings into my ear.

The year is so old. It was forever ago when the year was brand new and we were singing and laughing as champagne bottles burst and we lit sparklers. Now it's too late in the year and everyone else decries the end of summer or looks vainly for winter. Cry on, you fools. Enjoy the fruit of the harvest. The fields are ripe and bursting. The mist and the wind all comes together. The first rain comes and goes, filling the streets with shimmering gold lamplight. Summer keeps holding on to the vines, although October is far too strong. October comes and bites at the tips of the leaves. Reds bleed into the summer green, and orange and yellow explode into trees.

Cheese, wine and fresh bread are just as sweet as summer fruits. The apples on the trees sway and break, falling into grass. Persimmons cluster in dusty orange all over the trees, weighing down the branches almost to the ground. I drink them in, juice running down my arms. Walnuts are all almost gone forever, but the all the spiny chestnut pods have burst open over the ground, covering it in deep brown.

My boots clip the pavement sharply. I don't want to stay outside too long in you, October. You, my dear boy, are too cruel for my tastes. You tease me. You promise warmth with your sunlight and blue sky with clouds, but I know that my nose will be cold and that my hands will shove themselves into my pockets and still not find warmth.

I burrow under my covers in your morning light. I want to spend five more minutes just next to you, holding onto my pillow. But you tell me to get up and come to you, the day awaits and you have no time to wait for me. You will be gone before too long, on your journey, and I will have to wait for you to return from your business elsewhere. I will wait. I would write you letters, if only you would receive them.

Don't leave me as you have left me before, don't leave without saying good-bye. I know you've tried as best you can, every year the same with ghosts and candy, but this year, my dear boy, leave differently. Say good-bye slowly and gently, wish me well and promise to return.

The Bystanders

Again... another unfinished poem...

The Bystanders

We are all bystanders
watching one beautiful twisted wreck
after another, all in close sequence
like fireworks.
We stare, open-mouthed at
the initial contact,
when the front left headlight collides
with the other.
Violently, they kiss each other, like lovers
in that one moment until
the hood is shoved into the engine.
Oil and smoke become one
bloody orgasmic mess, all soaking into
the bed of pavement.

We are all brought close in this
tender moment of terror,
our chests heaving in post-coital bliss.
Complete strangers become closer
than a mother and a newborn child.

We go our separate ways
until it is our turn to dive through
shattering glass into
someone else's life.