Best Served Cold

I

I depart the granite calm, I watch

The cold of hate to fill the image when

You destroyed me in May. I vow

I will set fire to you in winter

A thought to a wound, I poison

The cotton clouds and I light and I burn

Horizons. Your heart will be a scorched earth

Covered in the light ash of snow.

And the sea falls in like boulders.

People never die here and yet

Every soul a fortress I plan to break.

Men have killed for less

And lie with dead minds for lack,

Like a symbol of warning that your

Blatant immortality is choosing to crumble

Amidst clouds long since burned away.

II

You swore regrets would chase me down.

Some part of those words flooded

My world in a curious form

Of smoke on the horizon.

My leaves have turned to color, or

So you spite through clenched

Teeth. I'll abide and let you smolder

Because I always liked that about your eyes.

You're something different now,

A new kind of creature whose pretty

Ivory claws sing across the granite,

Sharp and meant for me.

You've more life in you now then

You ever did. You're bright and

Burning, but I don't think you realize

That is my doing too.

Burns

I.

Mist in the morning and it's fallout,

birds chirping slowly like geiger counters,

sunlight burns lethargic and it's florescent bulbs

in a place that I don't want to be.

And the birds chirp a little more

when I come near.

II.

Days like these when the leaves are middle-aged

and surrender to color,

the world hums a bit with some hidden purpose,

clouds remind me of you and four years

didn't happen.

I always think of burning buildings, because

somewhere they did, and someday

they probably will again.

III.

Night haunts storm drains,

waits for reality to fall, to creep out

and fill the lurking space

between blades of grass and climb

up rough bark of trees to strangle

the birds, so they don't sing.

The night finds me

and I tape my fingers because,

I don't know,

this darkness could burn and

expose film. Instead it masks thoughts

and the things I need,

so I escape to the woods,

which are quiet and mine.

IV.

Stars, like silent friends,

have to obey some laws:

like gravity, and nights when it's windy

it's hard to light.

Your name, I write on paper,

and in the gun-room,

I set it on fire

and watch you burn up.

By Ben Chamberlain
Written 10/06/11, 8:30 AM. Revised 12/06/11, Revised again 04/30/12