Timor Mortis Conturbat Me

by Anton Yakovlev

I took my time compartmentalizing with exotic relish
but eventually did shipwreck into your apartment’s
cracked-asphalt blue mountain, just in time for my haze
to hike in again.  I couldn’t get enough
of your unsentimental photo abyss
which could also be used as a folding ghost
of dominant watersheds.  I cleaned clocks,
keeping tranquility above legends.

Falling asleep to your elegiac Augustan fuck-ups
was salubrious enough, but your purple
ground me to cricket flour.  Rogers and Hammerstein
pedaling is such an elusive science.

My faith in humanity was good and gone by the time
your fireproof circular token cult clashed with
the battalions in me — something you didn’t spot
until too late.  Chopin jazzed the three blind mice.
If only you had known more preemptively
what I meant.  Soon nothing more existed.