Sullen

Airlove voices
clutch at
words
you'd sing to bed
on grinning birthdays. Cool, pick them
apart, like a rag picker's
fist
'round a wreath of
stars.

And now
straddle
the letters in
turns. Gee, save
one for
December - what's
winter
supposed to be - but
nostalgia.? And nostalgia,
tourniquet scars?

Words
are just words, (don't mind them)

a luckless thread
at the back of your shirt. Some days
the wind dusts it off, some days
the wait. Oh

the wielding and the
bending. The honest
underspending. (Hug your
wooly violets by the
sun
when he

blots the pretty
'u', blurs
them 'i's and 'l's),
hey and

let your eyes smart

then
drink, his sullen
ink, for a

spelling you'd
kill

to get wrong again.