Don't Bring Me Down

I remember a night
filled with stars
smoky remnants
and aching limps
I remember whispers
giggled secrets
and confessions
I remember the path
stretching out and winding
stumbling in darkness
I remember you
your smoker’s laugh
and your open ear

Is this honestly necessary?
I ask, and you grin.
No, but it makes it more dramatic
I sigh and fasten the knot
The folds of black material billowing out
Behind you lies the photograph
A story frozen in time
He picks up his token
A crown of dark lined wood
I set it on his brow for him
And hand him his orb
It’s only pretend, my dear
I remind him with a smile
One day we’ll wake up from
This dream, and cry again to sleep.

Diamond crackled skin
A hundred clever fingers
And blue eyes that sing

Even as you walked up
Like you were hoping for a close-up
Even as you flashed me a crooked grin
Meaning for a lovely night of sin
Even as we danced real slow
Nailing fingers so as not to let go
Then you forgot your weapon to go to war
As I’d told you long before
Romance is what I truly dread
You hadn’t listened, now you’re dead.

You led me to the pier
The ocean swirling grey
My pockets weighed down
And my hands tied in knots
Your knife blade hands
Cut lashes in my wrists
My voice was stolen and
My salt tears blew in the wind
But still you led me to the water
And slowly let me
                                  down
Ice cold water stabbed my lungs
My flesh was stripped out from my bones
Sweeping hands caressed my feet
Dragging me steadily to the ground
I forgave you with my last breath
And your secrets I kept unfound.

All along the rainbow
Lie little pots of gold
And all the little fairies
Sit for mortal souls
“Come, young man!”
They sing with a smile
“Look at my pot of gold.”
Entranced, he glanced,
The little fairies laughed:
They had a new friend to dance.

Tongues of flame
Flickering on soft lily flesh
As the tiny coffin
Lined with sky
Is lowered into the scratch of earth
    Not dead,
I say
    Only sleeping.

Smooth waves of glossy
    dark paper
The play of light
    and shadow
        and faces in colour
Sharp scratched lines
    thin and spidery arms
cracked chipped lips
    and a toothless grin.
A split, division
    tearing apart the outside from within
An outside looking in
    (the abyss beckons
        yearning for your cold embrace)
Sharp scratched lines.

In many a way
I think that writing
is to try to astonish you
although it may kill you
to stir a body to motion
    to lust, to cry, to sigh, to buy
to unfold untruth
    as though it is an origami bird
        twitching in flight
from start to finish

Sharp thieving fingers
Sprouting from the earth
Sharp daggers
    a sinful turn
A bed of soft sunwarmed stalks
    golden waving hands
Sticky prickles wasting time
Sore sore feet
    fighting, struggling
Stamping through the underbrush
The silky down tips my fingers
    stroke the tender shoot
    and snaps them
The sinewy roots strike deep
Sorrow grows once more.