To afternoons

big sun up on hills
over my imaginary
sandcastles put-put-
puff-smokers on the
balconies of the past,
huff and spill smoke
on bowed heads, laugh
for some joke dead
long ago, no connective
tissue to the current
be-speckled
reality, I scratch whispers
into the filament saying all this,
saying nothing, each mark
a pencil gash on my notebook
page, each gash a woman
I've loved, each gash a'
sailing into universal void
oblivion, each microscopic
ash a truth fading away,

oh quail egg sky

you're a thousand years old
you'll never change

you'll never go on and die
          you'll never--
                    never--
                                will you?
                                will you?