Dust Settles

Dust settles like people in taverns, between city
buildings jutting upwards like swaying arms
risen to colourmark juxtaposition
between the lack of colours below them.

It's brushed aside by wind into piles,
like displaced sediments in a confined room
painted golden-brown, like the age-old unhealthy tan on
people's backs, someone forgot to sweep up.

In the night, dark-green trees turn black,
like reconnaissance soldiers under the cover of a false pretense
that poetry's remnants, ignored, streaked on sidewalks,
will not be their fate as well --

where tattoo cords on debris' wrinkled skin
filled with sweat, grime, and traces of reverie
mockingly snicker, laces of cigarette smoke point with
exclamations of "You will separate!"

Then, arms extended in every possible direction,
brighter leaves leap with old in every possible location;
hands are held and girths are embraced,
feet are traced where they are with where they had been --

raising holiday lights entwined around their arms
like strings of a stanza's lines; as wind blows, trees chant
'forget-us-nots', bleed chlorophyll, attempt to attract attention;
assuring themselves something will remain intact in a
golden-brown room of a house that just isn't occupied anymore.

by Kiite
posted on 11/24/2008