Sleeper in Raven’s City
November arrives, winding sheet over bleached leaves
I have given you up since late last winter.
Blue pills, round as the matriarch,
Swallowed up seventeen years of red life
And birthed me again. Kicking, shouting.
I emerged a cruel, splintering baby.
The colours red and blue all I can recall,
Though I never did see the lights of the sirens
I imagine they bled clean through
The fresh sheet of a Wednesday morning.
I imagine the cold air hot with screaming light
My baby brother’s hands shaking,
The thumb he once burnt scarlet
Mewling under dimming clouds.
Or perhaps the sky was a crystal cerulean.
Like I say, most I do not remember.
Quiet- Please- No speaking now-
Not a word till I spot something on four legs;
My mother’s bygone superstition,
Light leaking everywhere, everywhere.
The old classic, sunlight streaming
Through mottled, mordant trees
Laughing in their lithograph of monastic fervour.
One for sorrow, little raven
With the great big pit stuck halfway down its throat
Eyes light in the decaying atmosphere of April.
Look, the passing runners, look,
The passing mothers, children all skipping along
Agog at a world so well-lit
A sun so godly
And me, on my little bench, virginal, untouched,
But O, how devoutly unholy.
Sending light back through the earth,
Not wanting a lick of it,
Would much rather kiss Mr Psychopomp,
Feverish gaze, tongue down his throat
Than love a once bloody moon.
Diana is as much a mother to me
As my own mother remains a daughter.
That is to say, look at the fleshless bones
And laugh for horror. Swallow light
If all your dirty crumbs are gone.
Look! Look away! My head is flashing.
Little gleaming slivers, they pull me to some forgotten cell
Alone, finally, I spoon three more stars down my gullet.
Slowly at first, but now no more mothers, children, fathers
No aunts or cousins in big sold houses,
Slowly at first, and then light.
Starlight, blue flame, envelop me!
You’ve gone to my head!
You’ve turned the whole world a dim, weeping red!
You’ve devoured my whole life, a dim, weeping red!
Alarm bells in every pair of eyes
Ringing and ringing, phone calls on bright screens I never wanted-
Take me back to the earth-
Somewhere dark, somewhere warm-
I’ll writhe along with the worms
And eat my fill of decay.
Red shroud over my head so they cannot see
The stars sewn into my skin.
Red heart monitors, red wristband,
Red blood spewing from the ripped-out cannula,
Red words back and forth, spitted through snarling teeth
Blue walls painted for children.
Come into the light, sweet girl.
Open your eyes Miss Mausoleum
Quick, before the flames give way to ash;
Look at all this light you’ve made!
Watch how it kills everything, and you, still alive to laugh.