Posted by peebrain on 9 March
2006
Angel Wings
I am the sole survivor
of the red heat that swarmed into our town
seventy years ago, before the bugles
cracked in stunned abandonment,
before the streets collapsed from the insanity
of kinsmen running like yahoos with liquid skin
pooling around their knees, eyeballs bulging from
the simple physics of expansion.
My business is words, yet there is none
left to explain the vast
penumbra of white amber black.
I am the sole survivor,
I am alone with the dead.
Scraping congealed veins and muscles
in strips, off cobble stones on streets where
I had my first kiss, my second, my third --
then rinsing them in a soup of lye and thyme.
I hurl sated buckets over the bridge like
showers of red roses trailing a bride's veil.
From our withered hearts, perhaps
a mass murderer lurks, waiting to strike,
waiting to dig his bloody chipped claws
into an artery, sever with a flick of his --
I am the sole survivor,
trapped in a deconstructed armoire,
devious splinters reaching into hell
to raise fire and brimstone to my knee.
The sea is a boiling crimson,
while vultures watch the skies hungrily
with their putrid beaks. They mourn for what
is denied to them: the scent of decay
steeping in rot. They stuff promises
in my mouth and cackle as I vomit
them out onto my feet.
I am the sole survivor,
but penance will come in time:
I fasten crude leather straps
on blistered, mangled limbs,
draw bloody curlicues on waxened feather sheaths.
On my angel wings -
protruding in stark relief - I rub
salve dangerously, with simmering intent.
As I stood tightly at the precipice,
throwing my hair back as my last act of defiance:
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew
before his fall. It is the same when love fails,
and breaks Atlas's courageous back.
I may have come to the end of my triumph,
but this will not be my failing:
In falling, I savour flight's sweet delight.
