Roll Call 81-85

81.
What did the words say
On the cross currents,
Out in the deeep stream?
Sleep and remember nothing
Of the home I left behind
A million years ago.
Our souls are flowing like water,
Drip drop drip,
Dripping away.
Nothing can stop the water
Dams burst and overflow,
Sorrow: The trickle
Are our days enumerated,
And age can no more be
Kept from our faces
Than the look of contempt
In a haughty girl’s eyes
As she turns and walks away.



82.
You touch me lightly and I tremble,
Look away,
Hopefully not today...
No conversation,
But all my hopes are in vain.
And you whisper that you love me.
Outside the lightning flashes,
A quick flicker, a reminder,
Of abrogation, desire and one man’s denials.
When we embrace the lightning becomes ours,
And I am whole.
In the storm I shake with confrontation,
With the night,
With my self,
And with you come inside from the rain
Shivering and frail from the nothing.
The rain eases up and caresses the soil,
But the ground still wants more,
Drunk but ever thirsty.
The earth begs for more,
And I cannot look into your eyes
For all the storm has come inside,
Water ever trickling down,
I groan and give in with a frown.



83.
The Murder
The candle melts away
A voice from nearby asks, dripping sweet,
“Should I kill you?”
Press the moment to a close,
Surely the violent fury knows.
“Should I?”
Look and burn at the sight so unclean.
“Life?”
Death.
Careening down corridors of hate and choice,
With a ritual slice the choice is made,
The ropes fall away,
Freedom lies within a breath.
“Sacrifice,”
The voice says,
The voice,
“Your self.”
Your blackened self.
“Wince little weakling,
The end is near,
Triumph would have been but to try.”
So slashes deep the slayer of memories,
The life pours forth,
A cackling release, a feast.
For the senses a stuck pig squeals,
The body soon to feed a beast.
The voice moans sickly
As the life once given
Is taken and returned to nothingness.




84.
Today she came back from the emptiness,
The nothing of people who come and go.
For a while the sky was not so far away,
But far away is words, and far away is time.
Today I woke up alone.
The memories were close,
But not close enough,
Not as close (or far away?) as the stars
I saw in her eyes that night
When I asked her not to leave love again.




85.
Unbalanced: A Murder Ballad

The ghouls last night
Took me away and dosed me with fright,
I’ve come back changed.

Why do you look
With those cold eyes,
The ones that shook my soul?

They burn like fires
beneath old corpses on funeral pyres,
And wrinkle up like fools long dead.

Don’t look at me,
You burn right through.
How could one so sweet
Be so impure?

I warned you once, my lover dear,
You had your chance to swear off my disease.
But did you hear?
No.
Your body burns with your letters.

We wrote each other long ago,
Before sin rotted what was left of our minds.

I saw twas all rotten,
To waste they had gotten,
Alas they fluttered away.
I tried to catch them,
But heavy things do weigh.

Lover, hear me, listen closely.
Lover, where have you gone?
I will not call out again,
And watch your step
At the top of those stairs.

["What do you mean what happened?
She must have fell down these damned stairs."]

Like that fat, stupid critic,
I only asked him once not to mock me.
But did he hear?
No, and then, later on, just he and I,
Danced as flames seared his ears away.
His dance seemed more urgent than mine.

Why do you look at me that way?
Pretend you do not see the knife,
Pretend this is our reward,
Pretend.


[*Stairs and Flowers]
Note: I have always hated 85. I've revised it like a million times. I don't kno what's wrong with me. I burn good stuff and keep the crap. It's even worse now that I don't remember the accompanying tune on guitar.