Serial Balks

I keep myself company
with black asphalt snaking up ahead,
canyons blooming with the dead
of a hundred thousand trees.

And when I read between the lines,
I skip the consonants and rhymes
'til nothing matters but the whines
of Us and Is and Ys.

And colons seep like python bites
to trickle, cloak, envelope, dive
and filthy every other word,
annunciating useless verbs.

But every time I see a ghost,
I'm reticent to make the most
of he or she or it or thing
and ban my eyes for simpler things.

When I looked into your eyes
I saw a copperhead with fangs,
dripping venom through your thighs,
wafting toxins toward your bangs.

Moons are blackened by your ashes,
suns are crimson through the gray,
smoke and sorrow blankets grasses,
Buds and seedlings hide 'til May.

When in June you reappear,
dusting aphids off your shoulder,
seething with a different fear,
with the news you've gotten older,

Every second seems a lifetime,
every victory's a gaffe.
Each and every time your heart pumps,
you're almost certain it's the last.

You know you lived among the lilies,
and you drank from bubbling streams,
'Til you collapsed from your Achille's,
had you the warbling top of dreams?

So with or without syntax spike,
we'll croak and eek and sputter noise,
and with or without trails to hike,
We'll find our way. We're lazy boys.