your eyes
like smoked glass,
your skin tight
and jaundiced,
your mind a meadow
on fire.

the rivers now are of gasoline
cutting down through those
mountains of steel we left behind.

at night the sun never seems to set
anymore.
it never seems to rise, either.
and this world can hardly get to
sleep in this perpetual half-light.

the trees howl at the holes in the sky
vacated by the moon and stars.
when it gets like this your heart explodes.

you squeeze the air with all you have,
the air shudders a few millimeters.
with nothing to hold onto
and nothing to hold it with.
the bones drop from your hand,

one by one by one by one.