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 away
in the desert.
I’m still stuck in the coal tar.

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. I live in a 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.
Just one more becoming a vine,
Me,
You say
I smell like a pine tree.
I say you’re made of red clay and rocks.
You take a plunge and your head falls down.
Smack is the sound that it makes.

Something is hopping you up on the ocean
while I’m down in the lakes.
My veins are open 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.
I don’t wanna crawl to California.
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.