I

 

Maybe - it was just sex and poetry passing through your modus operandi.

I am no Rossetti, Dickenson or Plath. My heart hung in front of my heroines.

Emotions could rival, but words brew clumsy and fall cumbersome at their feet.

Ink spurts and spills from between my legs, puddling and muddying an

indiscression from the master’s muse. Brooding time in surburban solicitude.

I oscillate as you writhe in self hate, contemplating in vain to dissipate your love for me.

A Mont Blanc pen, once a gift, now a tool that toils a torpid tale of continuing possession.

I split and splice an alter ego - a Crazy Jane of wishful wanton malevolence.

Love is ever curious, I’m still curious about you, falling folly of the wayward fool

I wish for another Judas kiss. My darling beautiful fuck up, you broke your missing rib.

 

 

II

 

I’ve had knife to skin, all kinds of dense therapy to fade the eternal mourning,

yet this red room of pain remains. Hesitation at the bedroom door from all

who enter this butcher’s shop of words. Dissecting, creating, shaping by lowlight. 

My theasaurus a bedside bible. My dreams bleed a grimoire of grief and hope. 

Morality of a mother’s love checkmates me. I keep my two lambs close –

a closed book between me and the recurrent ache for final fatal escape.

Flippant with my own mortality, they must never know. I mutter, recite,

all sweetness and light amongst undertow of revenge without being vengeful.

Whittled weapons of thought do not touch your spurious domestic contentment.

In a amen of solitary wilfulness, I visualise your vivacious libertine decay.

 

 

III

 

Reflection recalls first prepubescent fantasy of a man. Twelve years old.

Innocently manacled by tall, thin silent stranger. Kept in sand duned castle,

tied, fed and captivated. I felt only his fever, hardened by his loneliness. 

Without light or company I was at peace, never wanting deliverance.

It was you.  It was you in my fantasy, It is still you, a torturous silence.

No man held me or will ever hold me in the way you did. You still hold me now.

I lay claim to transfigure you again, curing your blindness against your will.

Sweet absinthe stickens and thickens between my thighs. My ankle tied by

red thread still binding us, taking me to that place where you are truly mine,

remembering those times the cirrus clouds stilled and I lay cradled in your arms.

Whispering “I love you Katy” in prophetic tones, flaying my lips with doomed kisses. 

Seduced by a chalice of chance, I drunk - and you became silent again.

 

IV

 

Six seasons of discontent pass. In the late March snow, oak trees bud warily

in spring’s sharp breath over bitter ground where you took my venerated virginity.

Swarming seagulls collide confused unable to land on the canal outside my window.

Struck wilful by a wormhole of intuition, I hear a call from the Jack of Hearts

to reprove and reclaim a submissive Lilith who cannot lay her head to rest.

Seizing the pen, I follow frayed red thread that journeys me across unforgiving Irish sea.

This onerous ocean married us in our fool’s paradise, whether we liked it or not.

Stooping under weight of simple twist of fate, I know you can feel me coming. 

Knock once, Knock twice, Knock third and final time boldly on splintering wood between us.

After the longest minute it opens. Silently you stare the hard lonely fever

with no colour or light in your eyes. I caress the many lines now on your face,

preserving the poems you have been unable to write. You let me in.

 

© Katypoetess 2013