Motorway Skies

Pastel acrylics thicken like makeup

On a sweating sky;

Whose lucid beauty shines

In smothered peeks, behind

Cloud-smeared tide lines,

Oozing back, to bare that

Glistening pate of oily blues.

Evening forces whip the

Gathered masses, into furrowed shapes;

That crepe, so tenderly

Where tremulous tension

Triggers smoky migraine pain,

And siren bright spots

Accentuate strain.

Now the fickle hint of lowlight drains

Away; from shivering wisps of unshaken rain;

So only dirty fingerprints remain --

Dragged out, across their ghosts of backlit predecessors.

White-crested sky folds

Lap at the sun like thirst-crazed minions;

Cracked, into wire-wool bundles,

They scour lingering trickles of daytime

From froth laced lips.

Wedged horizons wax and wane,

Stretched taught-and-loose in ludicrous diversity

Across the ivory frames

Of infinite

Topskies,

Moulded into one azure-white-streaked ceiling,

Arched lethargically above whatever remnant radiance

Is squeezed, in viscous squiggles --

From top-heavy heavens

And sewn, like smuggled hellfire

Into the silver linings

Of the wide,

De-lighted

World.