Poem for a Cliché in Full Costume

When did you stop wanting to kiss me in elevators
When did you stop wanting to unsee the crowd of watchers, at inner circle roundabouts
When did you stop knowing which words make my breath take inroads to my trembling heart
When did you stop thinking butterfly blues shaped the maps to the stars
When did you stop demanding fingertips as fingerfood to your hungry needy love - never full, never enough
When did you stop seeing through words that meant something else, hell meant my lovely heart and go, to stay forever
When did you give up, let me slip to distant places in your mind, where you don't step in fear of looking back
Now, the waits are not so weighty
The suns are stars,
Not hot ticking time keepers to goodbyes
I cross the streets
I climb the stairs
That meld into each other
Dusty step by dusty step
A dog on ever corner 'case
Rumagging through imaginary bones
Buried in his heart
Looks through garbage
I bark a sudden tune to soothe
My worried mind
Am I an animal without a cave,
Without a street
Water is bland
The desert is sand
The forest is one tree after another
Tables and chairs and pencil sketches
On newspapers wet in unseasonal rain
Pouring on my heart like warm tepid realisations
Feet in murky depths of meaningless monsoons
I am like a bird without a song
A temple without a gong
Been away,
Far too long, far too long
I have forgotten the verses to my name
The letters to my poem
Coordinates to my frame of thought
I forgot. I stopped.
To be myself, the same the same
The blind spot
The sweet spot
Spots to be cleaned and kept that way
Nice and sweet and blind
To me
A spot unseen, behind a screen
Careen careen
Forget about it
Now we've meandered back
To our daily routine
To think, to dream
To feel too much
To wonder about
When
Did you stop doing that.