In the vacant expanses

where blooming moss cracks tar

and all the voices

popped and faded long ago

I go looking for no one

with a mask of gold

just in case my own reflection

catches me looking for more.

Days hacked open

by the night's ghostly marauders

look strange to the living

but not to my spinal eye.

Desks are empty

with scarred chairs

on roofless floors

the charts of catacombs

they never touched

laid open like the plans of ants

dates dutifully kept

that never came

on calendars of glass

with oily numbers.

Time was scrubbed

and so was I

of many errors

but the wind still howls

like something lost

in this parched

and achingly clean 

redrawn December.