Poe

POE

If you want to keep a soul alive,seal it in a story, behind a wall,and there will come a day youcannot tell which wall from wall.All are haunted now, which makesyour confession pointless, ifnot incoherent, and the copfolds up his notes, sighs, and leaves youbroken, scared, taking to hearta frail romantic taste for pain.No one to lay eyes or wasteor the wounded in their fevers.Kids in leather and lotus-eateneyes remind you, the tattooedfigures of the talon and skull fitinto fiercely microscopic holes.If you are high, the petals trail.The firework of a moment agodrops its slow and bony fingers.The policeman leaves and leaves.You sip your claret with a catwho sleeps for the both of you,because she is afraid of nothing,as you too are afraid, nothingbefore us, nothing after, but shecannot, in her little head, hearyou scratch against the emptinessthe cold, white, benumbing cantthat is the grand tedium of seas,the mesmerist whisper, the bellthat sizzles in the acid of its song.She cannot fathom your addictionwhere deep in every corpse is gold,like hair in songs of inexperience, each bitten sentiment anxiousto come clear as ghost, gas, totemswhen you plague them, paramourswhose names foam the lips of oceans,whose throats now are paper and swansin the land where you go missing.