Melon-Minded (Dark Against Dark)

1940's fortune cookie flames:

Stomping and snapping like black sequined tassels along time's folds and creases.

There were tambourine tangerine sunrises: shaking.

Like Polluck paintbrushes across our watermelon shelled walls that were quickly losing their erections--

De-robing the pink juicy flesh of my mind:

And I've got myself some watermelon seeds,

What if he

swallows 

the dark ones?

Not that I'd want a farm of my corroded crop

codling itself to sleep in his sleeping bag intestines,

But I've got myself some black seeds!

And him and I, we quilt dark against dark 

and try to prescribe prejudice

 to the outskirts of their Venn diagrams,

But we've found our seeds to be whittled the same!

...And cookies aren't the only things that take the same shape

 whilst laid out 

and compressed 

into cobwebbed corners

 by things so much stronger---

And they're not the only ones

We open to find an answer for our unpublished futures,

They're not the only ones!

And Time was rocking himself to sleep in gold-plated birdcages 

upholstered in charcoal snow,

And even Time had himself some black seeds!

So we took advantage of his dreaming-

Stomping and snapping in eras before the sky 

went dark.

From his fetal position, Time would tell us:

"DON'T LISTEN TO THE THINGS I SAY IN MY SLEEP,

DON'T TELL ME IF I SNORE,

Just lock me in and wear the skeleton key around your neck until she comes home--

I can sleep here, amongst your dark and her dark,

My shaking hands will go to sleep in flaccid fields, just

DON'T LISTEN TO THE THINGS I SAY IN MY SLEEP!"

So let us unhinge our watermelon shells like oysters--

Wearing skeleton keys and black seeds

 like panther pearls

around our necks:

And Time's shaking hands will go to rest.