Wandering the sultry path,
Not even a year,
With thoughts as muddled
as the bleary horizon line,
How curious it is to encounter,
The King of the land I left,
Himself, a pariah.
Wandering the sultry path,
Not even a year,
With thoughts as muddled
as the bleary horizon line,
How curious it is to encounter,
The King of the land I left,
Himself, a pariah.
I gingerly slice,
into the necrotic tissue,
frostbitten by your touch,
pulling apart the eschar,
the burned bits,
ruddy with congealed blood,
down to the vasculature,
to the place that still hurts and feels pain.
Because healing goes from the inside out,
And numbness conceals a festering wound.
You try to thaw the ice,
It's what gentlemen do,
Inadvertently perhaps,
But nonetheless true.
What you don't understand,
Is that I've cryo-cauterized the wounds,
And with that layer gone,
I bleed right through.
Heaven won't claim my Opium Angel,
He's a man who lost his soul,
The darkness festers in his sadness,
And he plunges in the hole,
Heaven won't claim my Opium Angel,
Though he's knocked out on the floor,
Cosmic workings covet his anguish,
He is doomed to suffer more,
Heaven won't claim my Opium Angel,
He stands waiting- gaunt and slim,
Defeat engulfs his awkward posture,
As he courses whim to whim,
I beg the stars and the Lord, Our Father,
To rid him of his sin,
To bring back the man with eyes of wonder,
Or take him home again.
Stuck,
on my fingertips,
like sap from pine,
just sweet enough,
to hesitate removal.
Predatory,
but no tropical spine or flare,
to alert a young man,
of the carcinogen-
a lingering thought.
If I poured all my blood,
into a crystal decanter,
it would still contain,
the millions of splinters,
that tear my veins like glass.
No pill nor spirit,
no metaphysical dialysis,
could remove them.
No priest nor exorcism,
could expel the poison.
I taste you,
the bitterness-
from your flesh or your disposition,
lingers on my tongue,
unable to dissolve,
Insoluble.
It ruins the new fruit,
a Midas-like curse,
your presence.
My only solace is that I know you taste it too.
The skin I stitched back on was crude,
A flimsy gauze pressed deep in the wound,
Where sugar-sweetness drew in the worms to chew,
My heart, pan-seared in cast iron,
Brown butter and the fat rendered through,
A familiar smell, but noticed by few,
Awakened with nails in the flesh of my throat,
Begging me to catch a breath or two,
With watery eyes I try to,
The strongest trees must sow deep roots,
The axeman comes forth sharp and true,
To undo, undo, undo,
The mask is cracked in the vermeil way,
It shows in the faintest glimmer or hue,
Seething blood and hatred of you,
A swan song would imply there was a man left,
But the savior knows that's gone too.
She sits tables down from me at the bistro, this woman.
Her harsh features jut out first. Stark black hair, pin-straight, with angular bangs drawing you to her face. Her eyes are cold blue, the piercing color of morning fog that presses against the windows before the sun has reached the horizon. Her eyelids are heavy and sunken, the kind that belong to dreamers or drug addicts. Her neckline is a strong beautiful curve that ensnares the eyes and forces them down to her slender shoulders.
Her softer features come next. A nose that broadens slightly and shale pink lips spread thinly in a smirk- her typical expression. Her dress and boots are black, fashionable but unremarkable. She's subconsciously chosen them to not divert attention from her face. A slender silver chain adorns her neck and dips down into her dress.
I imagine she works a job by day. A shopkeep in a bookshop or a florist perhaps. She lives above the shop in a dusty attic where she works on her true calling- art.
I can't say much concerning the man she is sitting with, her paramour, save for the fact that he is enraptured by her presence.
She has a simple name undoubtedly but it is irrelevant. In conversations she is often referred to as "her".
He insists they go to his place this time, but sure enough she persuades him to her raftered loft. It's a place where one never feels completely safe, perhaps she's chosen it for this reason. The odd smell of paint chipped off the walls and baked by the sun lingers in the air of the place.
A bare mattress on the floor is where they sleep and have sex. If he ever stated that they made love she would've shut him down with a shrill laugh. Sex was carnal for her, love was a spiritual feeling reserved for her and far beyond the reaches of human flesh.
Her urge to draw would come without warning, many nights he would wake to find she had moved to her easel, positioning it in the moonlight.
If whatever chaotic muse possessed her thoroughly, her art could be a days-long affair. A few crusts of bread would be the only evidence she had moved from her position at all.
Her appearance in this trance is simultaneously erotic and laughable. She wears only a flimsy pair of silk pants, nealy threadbare themselves. Her breasts are marred with charcoal dust, smudged in steaks. The corner of her mouth is mottled with ink from biting down on her markers; an unfortunate anxious tick she has developed. Her hair is a wild mess, having been pulled back when she needed focus and becoming stiff from cigarette smoke. He wouldn't dare touch her in this state of lunacy.
Her naked appearance does manage to make her more human, but never once more vulnerable. Several small stretch marks on her abdomen contrast her ghostly complexion. They validate that she's even real. There's something about her arched back that suggests malnourishment. She most assuredly was sent to bed many nights without supper; something easier for her mother to do than to admit she could not afford to feed her.
He excuses himself from the table and she grins when he is out of sight. It's the first time she's exposed her teeth. It becomes clear she takes delight in how captivated he is by her, she feels she has won some sort of game that only she is playing. Her aloof demeanor resumes when he returns.
Being both aware of her looks and the phallic nature of a cigarette lends to the attention-drawing way that she smokes.
I glance at my watch at last to find several hours have passed gazing at the woman in the bistro. I have been at her table, walked up to her attic, reached up to her frame while laying on the mattress, and seen her taken over by a creative spirit. As I fumble to put on my coat and leave, she gives me a slight smile as if to suggest that she is aware of my musings, and that they are all true.
Moonflower,
The upstarting dawn,
My last existence-
A gentle breathing against-
A cold stone slab.
Ritualistic. Dualistic. Simplistic.
And nevertheless cruel as the sea,
Black as an Amazon rainbow,
Obscured by the blight-
Child of light,
Come kiss the dark,
Cold,
Stark,
And loving you more each day,
Precious prey,
My...
Moonflower,
The upstarting dawn,
My last existence-