“Halloween 2000-Something”

(And older poem from 2020:)

As dawn yawned, morning’s blush sung

What sterling flushed, for sunshowers chorused

Clouds of Kodachrome, ice colored daylight if

Angel’s breeze, so overcast raining—coffee steams

Bundled coats, cold breath arose as aurora smoke

Somebody tell Carlos to play that one Liz Phair album

My fingertips still have sand and turmeric on them,

Beneath this nickeled welkin blossomed dreamlike,

Talks of Labyrinth amidst half-light, just like those songs

10,000 Maniacs used to write about back in the 90’s;

Varnished sunrise, first-light opaline, mirror-like

Amidst washed-out denim, such autumn-bleached sky,

Sandy glass of quartzite, gossamer forever sunshine

Iridescent yet ashen, lambent tungsten of moonflowers white

Blessed Atlantic skyway, the blanket left on the beach was mine

White poplar paradise, overcast shore, pearlescent daylight

Tinsel waves, ailanthus trees of heaven, wouldn’t you just believe

I’ll be Rosemary—a gospel of solaris/solstice, cusping your hands,

Grasping at water like sand—like Athena, barefoot and it’s 9AM

Eyes of Aurora Borealis, skin as if it hadn’t been yet kissed by sun

Jupiter was once Niobium and blood, tonguing Pluto off tin foil

DIY crack pipes from light bulbs, iodized salt and Brillo oil, no more

Sassafras à la MDMA—used to resemble that one cover from EMA’s

Past Lives Martyred Saints, how the day ran away, escaped—you did

Relive an aesthetic, Xerox you’re Maggie Gyllenhaal in Donnie Darko

Beneath a cerulean azure so pewter and heather, wanting to run forever

Daybreaker pallid yet sheer, prismatic though clear, the same as angels

Hair, like smelling petrichor beside a hollowed-out place, somewhere

There, sunlight milk akin candle waxing—so isn’t this daydream

Just a memory, weren’t we vaping, playing Final Fantasy XIII

Watching your older sister’s copy of Reality Bites, getting clean off Calvin Klein,

Meanwhile, coffee and bialys, cross-legged in a circle, pretending it was still

Somehow the 90’s—Far Rockaway, mornings when the beach looked ivory

Outside—October’s light, always alive so was Friday all the time, we’d go

Listen to the Stone Roses or Gin Blossoms as you strummed guitar, you were/are

Vanilla Coke-Zero, smoking beedi’s, spinning an empty bottle of Pellegrino

While the sea’s algid breeze drifted through an open door screen, as alabaster

Empyrean became crepuscular, boreal dayspring, distant waves echoing,

Temporary infinity—her ocean kingdom of NYC, morning of Halloween

2000-something would and forever not ever be, only a pure memory

 © 2020, A. M. D’Angelo