In speckled leaves and heartless sound

Sweet ashes float down to the ground

While marble angels and pure white swans

Sing lullabies and cradlesongs

 

Life’s solemn companion settles here

Clothed in blacked drapery and mystic veneer

He moves like water through his mansion of stone

Lovingly inhaling the sickly sweet cologne

 

He asks of me which lot is mine

Whether it be bare or adorned with a deadline

Upon the dusty ground will there be

A rose to signify the sadness in delicate filigree?

 

I replied in broken speech and unadultered pain

That it is only I that continue to remain

For you have stolen my very heart

And onwards to heaven did my true love impart

 

Accursed Satan and vengeful God!

My tattered gaze can pierce your haughty façade

You shaped my world around her presence

Then you rip her away with no condolence or pretense

 

And if I lay bruised and exposed for all the world to see

Could you find it in your hearts to return her back to me?

A bastard birthed of true love and earth’s cruel vices

There can be no future without your love to suffice this…

 

Oh my love, my battered knight, I see how you suffer so

And my soul weeps black tears of ocher to the resting place below

But do not despair over a life that has ended before its prime

Instead, reminisce of the memories that we have made in departed time

 

Think of the scarlet of the peonies that you left for me on my window ledge

Tied with a matching ribbon around the green stalks, and of what you pledged

A future full of happiness, free of lonely nights and antagonizing harm

You delivered your promise every waking and unconscious hour that I laid in your arms

 

Darling prince, you reign over more than the seven turbulent seas

But over my life and my love, you were my only reason to be

So as your grief consumes you and you shield my body with your own

Remember that you were my guide and introduced me to a pleasurable world unknown

 

Never had I before experienced the wonders that callused hands could do

Of how they could hold me, caress me, until I was reincarnated into a woman new

Of how your mouth was like a blistering fire blazing across my tender skin

But your breath was cool as I nestled against your chest and felt the rough whiskers on your chin

 

Do you recall the summer day when the sun was streaming in between the evergreens?

I wore a white dress and you a gray suit as the priest asked a question of thee,

“Do you take her to be your loving wife, to cherish and hold, to forever protect?”

I smiled wide as you whispered a ‘yes’ and in feverish haze our lips met

 

You are still young my love, not even three and twenty winters have come and gone

Do not waste one more moment wishing for death, or one more morn cursing the dawn

For I can offer you an eternity of undying, unblemished adoration and security

Wake from your mourning place and take the hand of your very own Aphrodite

 

What trickery is this that the gods have placed before me?

Are they shaking with laughter and dancing in their glee?

For suddenly, there stands an angel illuminated in the mist

She resembles a once living girl, someone that I have missed

 

Do you mistake me for a fool, phantom?

Have you come to recite me psalms?

King David cried out for mercy from God

But was instead blessed with royalty and alms

 

Unhinder your troubled mind and let it wander to the heavenly stars

Beyond the moon and distant shores, past Egypt’s pyramids and the bazaar

Gaze down upon the miseries that you have inflicted upon yourself

Made from the sharp bite of metal and rusty red that can never heal itself

 

Madam, how can you say that you see it all?

Surely you haven’t seen my agony or unending fall?

Into the depths of despair was my sanity thrown

See me now, I speak, I’ve been dethroned

 

But offer me salvation

Grant me everything I ask

All I want is to be with you

And in stone eternally cast

 

For life has lost its sustenance

And love has lost its blood

There is no heat left in my bones

Or belief in the Son of God

 

 

Then forget about the Son of God and put your faith in me instead