Summer Rain and Such Things

Flowers tickle the back of my neck
like cigar smoke, curling in
and out of me, blooming vanilla
and pearl, a scent so fresh
as the birthing of souls
it's almost enough to forget
the gauntlet that lies ahead,
the endless trap of the gray mundane;
Red alarm 6:15 glowing through the winter void
anxious lines for coffee that steal
my kindness like a fly in the gaping maw of venus
where our lives seem simple as cigarettes
in geologic time, regret and relaxation but
burning, always burning
down, it leaves me feeling
anorexic again at the table of life,
no communion, every line on the menu
a brand new way to be damned.
But no ink of despair is so dark
as to blot out the spin of our sphere,
and Heaven as the sky and not a mandate
turns ever around us,
and the only way to wash out stars
is light
and the crashing storm always opens
cloudless blue
opens again, to purple, to green
to all the layers that allow
grass, gods, bodies.
Grow.