I lost a friend upon that hill.
I took a train from the North in the middle of summer
when the hill and the town itself seemed possible.
Liquid and digestible, a communal infection.
You lay on your back, spread, coming back
to haunt the residents of a town you might have
committed yourself to without consummation.
You grin, roll your wrist in play.
Enjoy me and calmly disinvite me.
Maybe you were preoccupied, maybe
trying to extricate your skin, your birthright
win it back from underneath dead fingernails.
I know of the bloodrush into elasticity of
competing with the dead, the perfect bread.
Perverted mummification, warm and wet flesh unchanging.
I cannot absorb the comparison I cannot penetrate the distraction
So I left you alone.
We all left you alone.
This town is everywhere, howling at a warm sunset.
Orange gleaming against modest skyscrapers who say "we are not our brothers"
I am floating down Memorial in my slow pace.
I can see Sophistry and Restitution, they are one and the same.
Here they come, holding hands, turning left out of Westminster.
Walking explanations, heading towards me, making eye contact.
Smiling.
You are lying though, with arms spread,
up on the hill, oft insurmountable, vulnerable now but
I will leave you there to stay, for I know the toll to pay
for the roads of Hope and Angells
You lost your faith in Providence, sweetheart
And I suppose at one time
so did I.