cow-eyed

Somewhere clear across the ocean,

you live in a sandy place.

Cooking up some kind of potion

Mind in aerospace, by now

Your eyes are derelict, mine are sunken.

Driftwood smells sweet

My eyes are pricked, and everything,

heart shrunken.

Genuinely, I cried. I’m starting

to doubt the evil stare. I know

you absence love. I know you lick

milk. I know the skin

gets pricked. Sin gets mistaken,

Succulent bleed in the desert.

That’s where you are, far from here.

And me, swallowed by coal. Tar. 

I fear,

Your love is an open wound,

and mine is a geode, hollow and crystal.

I rattle when you shake me.

Because you are a good place to rest my head,

I am sodden. Residing in a simple shed, 

I am a pink petal orchid. Refined,

sad about the way the trees pined.

I am mad about the way you miss 

the honeysuckle.

Are you in need of a morning glory?

There’s thousands here, of growing vines

You say.

You’re made of red clay and rocks.

You take a plunge and your head falls down, smack.

The sound that it makes.

Something is hopping you up on the ocean

while I’m down in the lakes.

My veins are here for you to pierce.

The southern way wears me down.

I want to feel the sea lapping on my feet.

I could drown, a routine deceit,

perpetually sweet.

I don’t wanna crawl to California,

I wanna bury myself in a hillside.

Tell the stars to warn the countryside.

Showing courage in the face of danger,

I am plucky.

I’ll tell the whole damn state of Kentucky,

bury me in the hillside

with the needles, heavy

and cow-eyed.

A steel-train for my lullaby.