distort my shadow with play of prism
elongate and fenestrate the light in godly prison
subjugate such spectrum with uncanny precision
.
i watch as you deftly twist the beam
with sleight of hand, perverse
and palm unseen
when fingertips are pungent,
this air is kerosene
.
you want me fire
intensify
to heated point,
but I am rainbow
lavish
set to page anoint
my skin
won’t break
though tainted from scratch
and taunted by branding iron
tremulously inked with tattoo tint
dehydrated, despite monsoon
singed when sun fires through ozone
it shall be a resilient dermal shield
when unsuspecting hearts yield
to the treachery of time
..
there will always be skin
pulled tight over bone
bending
presumed to be a smile
unending
grimacing curve of lip tension
errant betrayal of intention
when puckered with piloerection
wrapping, sealing
neuropathic unfeeling
your skin
where once I was a field of wildflowers
shaded cool near open plain
caressed by breath of winsome breeze
cooled by kiss of springtime rain
.
summer saw me serried and root bound
in servitude of crumbled ground
oh that you, young traveller
should find me, found
.
patiently in seraphic state
a scintilla of self, I did but wait
with drifting seeds
and scion stretch
yet autumn wasted
to weed…such wretch
.
for the dark, duplicitous skies
disturbed the dance of butterflies
and lured away, through savannah grass
far from my field
you then did pass
i wander through the rooms
of you, protean partitions
a fawning pass through
shadow facing, self effacing
.
find me
in a cloistered sanctum
an airless antechamber
of faded light fenestrations
spawning Lescaux like illustrations
ancient projection and flickering scenes
reality yielded, yet gossamer dreams
..
you offer me such squalid abode
a somnolent subterranean cell
lulls shallow breath, long slowed
as hypoxia calms the Elysian dark
halycon opiate memories spark
… with hermitic spores
..
something scurries in the sooty stillness
scabious rodent claws at my cheek
“how did you get here” i whisper
“another fanciful figment, so meek”
“why do you stay” say i
“i cannot reach the unlatched door”
indolent, i close my eyes
with claws at neck
i wait some more
i was a bird
i tried to launch from a balcony
but you saw the calamitous skies
rendered opaque in my eyes
and grabbed my gnarly wings
feathers fell: funereal offerings
.
when I was a python
i had a serpentine aspiration
to contort and twist into suffocation
but you distracted me with quail eggs,
juggled by a roguish marmoset
cajoled by such tomfoolery, I forget
.
then I was a leopard
i slipped away into the night
camouflaged in shadows
to a covert carnage site
later, to discover in defiant disarray
pierced through by arrow of curare
at last …. my own lifeless prey
Melpomene* drums her fingers on my temples
and bites my lip with potent intent
observes my penury of writing
from her dour dominion of dissent
.
she reminds me of past anguish
rancid rhymes of fervid ferment
a melange of acrid reveries
bursting dams of dark lament
.
how then to explain, oh muse
a pen now dulled, infrequent
i’ve grown weary of the tumult
sybarite surrenders; senescent
this dearth of inspiration
corollary consolation
I am loved , I am content….
.
.
.
*melpomene is the Muse of tragedy
i linger in wistful reverie
lacquered luminary layers of mind
and to the clashing soundtrack of the sea
i contemplate
the possibility
of we
.
my gaze falls into the apocryphal azure
of our mutual sky
what if the answers are there….
on high
in the random scatter of the gulls
or in splintered fragments of shells
sifted in fingertips…
in prolonged silences
vacuum distilled defiances
in eyes dampened by distant reminiscences
of
you
.
