Was it bleak or bright, I cannot say, so mesmerized was I,
when I saw you cross your balcony to take the morning air.
Brilliant were the beams and bands that danced about your hair:
an angel in her nimbus, uniting earth and sky.
And I saw you there, saw your red eyes catch the day,
saw you look in my direction, saw your red eyes look away.
A man am I, a dog with human glands.
I snuck behind a moving van and wiped my sweaty hands.
A love unreal confused me, abused me,
tucked my tail and called me stray. Bite the hand
or beg for more? True to form, I slunk away.
And though indeed it strained me and pained me to adjourn,
I blew a kiss and swore that on the morrow I’d return.
My heart, he soars on silken wings.
That new day came. Ah, so unjust! And so complete my pain;
I saw you with another man, your nether halves entwined... perhaps,
though shards of years were ground to dust, my blood prints marked me plain:
a mongrel doomed to stoops and stones, a cur condemned to scraps.
I saw you — saw you slit me like a knife,
eviscerate my very soul and leave my pride to rot.
You... you kissed this man! You graced his life
with lips Love meant for me. You left me nought.
So rapt, this man! Oh, why, sweet thing, were you so wrapped in him?
A fractured dream, a crippled heart, ha! Do they make life dim?
My brain, he lurches light-to-shadow.
The day was black, and cold as sin. Intent, hell-bent,
I sought your hearth again... and saw you with a dozen men!
I blew it there, I lost it then. I split but scampered back in ten.
Then kneeling ’neath your window, wrist bleeding onto chalk,
I visualized a pentagram and drew it on the walk.
O wretched me! The ills I loosed were sudden and extreme.
I seemed to reel through realms surreal, engulfed in flames and steam.
But in that rune I saw you — your burning hair, your melting face —
betrothed to a misshapen brute, and crushed in his embrace.
I saw you fry, my tainted pie, my angel-not-to-be.
No matter, dear, our course is clear. No other fool,
you fickle jewel, will share your fate with me.
My fist, he palsies as he clenches.
Dismayed by dreams of infants’ screams, I part my lids to find
I’ve merely lost my will-to-be, I’ve yet to lose my mind.
The frauds and freaks run howling, the living rape the dead,
I’d give my all to make my peace; alas, I’ve made my bed.
With toes aflame I wander lame down ways that pitch and wind;
the lashers all assume I’m lost, the hiders think I’m blind.
But I saw you — the Master’s squeeze — a wizened, crippled crone:
with wagging head and yoke of lead, an anvil on your rear.
Your shins were munched, your back was hunched, your skin all puckered rind.
A scorched queen with a smoking crown, your swelling belly led you down
a path of spewing stone. Fouled and flanked by giant flies,
I saw you pass through veils of gas, your piglets close behind.
Your clogs were frogs, your wedding ring a thing of chiseled bone.
Your skirt was thatch, with hose to match the squalor of your thighs.
I saw you walk his wombats, dear, with fishhooks in your eyes.
My leg, he chases me in circles.
