an offering, in fragments to the dead, the lovely & those who still create

I was at the highest platform
of my widely-revered
circus routine, thinking back
to the time when I was in
rehearsal constantly

before I found the lip
and, thinking twice
about the downsides
of O thinking twice,
veered off from the veneer
of my oil-sunned nose
down toward the
pillows gathered below
resembling a nest of winter.

bushes were smuggled
in as an illegal species
but now are abundant,
and are ruining everything.
damn bushes, disrupting
the coalescence of seasons
against the backdrop
of nature looking somehow

like an illusion.

the tree, tip-spiced with
silver, pixies like jewelry
twinkling like the first sleet.
its roots stretch no farther
than the nearest
tombstone, unreadable name,
deceased, good-night, & may you rest in peace.

a necklace of napalm,
which was an oddity of a gift
sent in a singed package,
(smelling slightly of gasoline
and other bad burns)
brands to your neck,
giving you hickies
countlessly & all over,
purple blotches
that, to the outside reader,
look a lot more like bruises.

tonight then I offer,
in addition to telling-offs
and the auctioning
off of my darkest secrets
and even darker looks,
a telling of a much quieter story,
worthy of fire-places
where cocoa is poured as the jitter
ceases, leaving me to tell it as it is,
accomplishing more
or less the same job
as stirring gallons of gasoline
into a broth of fire.