CADAVER CARNATIONS

In covert shadows milking soft regrets from
graves spineless and gone grey, I walked among
the grateful dead and wished I could fade into
a slip of memory too, ravishing with melancholy
watchfulness, impaling my heart with insincere
shafts, I couldn't breathe through the Dark
that congealed over my Innocence shedding
scarlet petals, but I unburied my bloom and
found my navel blueprint was still there
-aching and aware-sewing together Virginity's
seams with Twilight's tissue ties, Withering
Moonlight and Cadaver Carnations perfumed
the gravestones' mildew labors-and the rose
I held that wilted against my weary breast,
her colors softly died-and I pearled them with
my bouquet of tears, I still loved her even
as her petals fell into the mud and became
smeared with my blood, I smelled her carcass
carnality while Twilight's fingertips teased
my mortality, lonely shreds I became among
the graves ravished by weeds and weeping,
I heard the ghosts moan to the fallen foliage,
haunting the hawthorn boughs, inciting the
buried buds with baneful thoughts, an echo
was all that the Night had sown with her
black magic, an amulet to appease the spirits
that pulled the curling leaves into crimson
and blue decay, screaming scarlet tongue pistil
and thorns to pluck out the perfumed pain,
it was here I knew that the Fires of Reality
were just an insignificant whisper, a dying
ember casting no truthful light where I walked
in the graveyard, carrying Cadaver Carnations.

May 17-19, 2010