Haze

Asleep in the toddler-ripped, mesh hammock

with a bitten foot atop the gritty stone bird bath

that whirls leaf infested water in slick currents 

as the moon becomes anew above her sweaty head.

A half drunken Coca-Cola bottle rumbles around in the dry grass

as her dry toe creeps down toward a colony of hungry ants

Eyes fluttering with flaming indolence———————

her dehydrated voice croaks an improvised poem that loses meaning

With every breathy sigh that interrupts nonsense lines.

Stepping over the neglected dahlias

With muddy, creased white leather sneakers

Terrorizing tangled weeds

Who rustle together like a flock of shivering birds.

The absent moon blows its essence

As if to cool down a boiling beef stew.

Cracked bottles with his caffeine infused saliva rimming the mouth

lay at the bottom of a pit of blackened trees.

He washes upon the swaying, silent girl

her gentle eyelids twitching 

as his phone tower figure covers the empty, late night sky.

The strands of his dark hair highlight

The burning abyss found in an evening

of a disappearing Summer 

Where hungry mosquitoes find shelter on suburban porch lights

and drunken teenagers climb outside 

Through grimy windows open a quarter way.

He stares at her like a missing lover, 

his eyes -- a false whiff of disgusting naiveté, 

She dreams in increments,

He creates a grainy, black and white motion picture

Where she lay in an infested rat nest of a grave.

His deep, shallow breaths halt the swaying trees,

The slow cicada song dies down

As if a neighbor told them to cut the volume,

and the last streetlights knock out

Like a bloody, toothless boxer in his last round.

She is left alone in her backyard with the grace of Mother Nature and him;

A man lacking a full heart capacity —

the world paused for him.

She now knows the last world she dreamt of

while he reigns upon her

He crooned through a dry cough, 

“I will see you again.”

She dreams through her last breath.

And the cicada choir hums again.