Daphne and Everything After

From 2005 I think

Daphne and Everything After

Everything I ever wanted
Tilted over and spinning out of view
Fuzzy images in flickering frame
Forwards or backwards still look the same

Stirring memory awake from cold
Smiling through a perfect figure eight
Steaming coffee to warm our toes
Seeking truth from secrets in words, and prose.

Black silhouette on grainy film
Sleek and silent glistening grace
On the rooftop with feline feet
Smoky gray across the stacks
Deeper and deeper
Into memory.

Everything after is never the same
I don’t live in sleepy hollow any more
Long after the flicker dies out
I’ll remember and figure it out.

No more lawn parties on Hunting Avenue
Long ago and far away
So far it seems unreal
Not far enough to forget
In my mind
Still awkwardly kept.

I don’t see you anymore
Like life it all came undone
Circumstances changed and everything after
Never the same
But still we live.

In a city
Seems like a million miles
Removed and alien
From who I was
Weaving through a crowd
In the company of many
Yet totally alone.

Parallel lives
Intersecting at points
Don’t know why it happens
Or what I am supposed to do
Waiting till its over
To gain a clearer view.

Fractured time
Measured before and after
A water mark to remember
A black turtleneck in a smoky room
The red lights distort the memory
Under the spell of madness
And magnified by the moon.

No matter the art
Or the gilded lights
Red velvet curtains to hide your grin
Long before the fall
The trouble, or the gin.

Pistachio green the color
I run my hands along the couch
I wonder why it seems so strange
Laughing in the night wild and free
Tomorrow did come and then everything after
Like it always does
Melancholy morning after all the laughter.

I tried to paint it on the wall
The swirling colors of your hair
Eternal spirit untamed
But I could never quite capture
Your heart so shimmering and slick
At least not like you did.

You made me blue with white hair
Like a negative where dark is light
Ghostly eyes inwardly reflected
Backwardly lit they stare
From who knows how or where.

You never see it coming
The change more subtle than sweet
A year or a thousand miles
Only adds more polish
More glow and mystique.

The song drowning down the dock
Better muted
Than closer I feel
Silent the lightning bugs dance
Off and on
And then they’re gone.

When everything has changed
Maybe then you’ll know
When everything is distant
It casts a better hue
And we’re all drawn backwards
Back and over again
Reduced to what matters
After everything else
Is shattered.

You shall shine like the sun
Bursting through retreating clouds
But I didn’t come back to take your hand
But only to taste your glory
And I didn’t come back to tie you down
But to love so right and finish the story.