Flower Half Blown

Lids shutting down like the door

to your father's failed business.

A sigh in the balcony as we run the reel

backward, summer-day glare

battering down the blinking inner eye:

I remember you.

Rainslick lust, delirious mudslide

emceed by Sgt. Pepper or some other freak,

you curled me into wide smiling hands,

your face blank enough to engrave

We're all nineteen in our heads

though the hour grows late

and lawns in suburbia hiss and spit

on an old man's schedule.

Pernicious blue fills the TV.

Shouldn't watch it, this traffic accident:

Comeback rockers swivel by on artificial hips,

leap for the high notes on crackling knees.

They miss. Time has called their bluff.

I should have left a light on. Something.