Silverfishes by Matthew Milia

A bright night kitchen moth and the washcloth that I use
For the refuse
That is littering all of your clues
Orion is dead and gone but something in it still
Belongs to me
The bright night I see
High hot-time all the braggarts drag
Their boats down to the water
She dragged down to drown each and every
Brown rag I bought her
The silverfish they ditch their skins as
The Saturday air raid begins
Pitching exoskeletons
Revolting in their molting
Don’t you know I’m just like that?
You can tell where I’ve been at
On every doormat I have sat
A relic so angelic
Oh the once-hard-biting night
Now ruthlessly a toothless sight to see

A shot down Telegraph with a hot laugh as we cruise
Through the sinews
Connecting all of your clues
The blinds they clap for
The napping overheated tangles
Daytime may climb high until the dusk sucks out
All that it mangles
Melting with the blacktop moms
On a bed of palms and psalms
Immersed in the universe
Of off-ramp proms and sitcoms
Sylvan Lake and in between
Perpetually like Halloween
I saw you
In the dormitory with the warming glory
Of the harvest
The pilings of the night are whiling out
Where their forms are the largest

Feeling about half as vicious
As all the silverfishes crawl
If I truly am a coward
Memory-fueled and fear-powered
I’ll be damned
But if I were
That gorgeous blur
I’d be
Sure

A bright night kitchen moth in the washcloth that I use
For the refuse
That is littering all of your clues
Tripped up on the alley weed
Through which I elbowed and kneed
The bottle of my beer emptied
And I was warm and fluid
The body is a bottle, I guess
That I would like to throttle, yes
Mottled skin and spilling sin
And a holiness so stupid
The heaven that I long to see
The undone linearity
I’ve proven
Is all the love I’ve tried to show
Buried where those buildings glow
And ruined?