Deathlike is our love.
Tired, expired, stagnant and numb.
I'm through playing dumb, treated like hired help.
When we met my pulse it fired, now like death it has expired.
We lie in bed side by side like corpses in a morgue,
inanimate, undesired, tired.

I'm sorry if this hurts but love it can expire, lose its fire and it's flame.
I wish that I could say we're both to blame, but you my love you sired elsewhere, and expected me to understand that you were desired by another and now I'm expected to play the role of second mother to a child,
innocent though he is of his father's shared night of tireless passion with another!

And so it fell to me to prepare this fine repast, forget about the past,
look toward the food cupboard and make a dinner of herbs.
A pinch of hemlock, a touch of aconite, a soupçon of strychnine and a
drop of arsenic. All prepared by mine own fair hand, it's bitterness shone in my tears, as you praised my cooking and my fidelity to you, begged my forgiveness and took me to bed.

Now, cold you lie.
Forgiveness I could give, it was the forgetting that did both you and me in. Like Romeo to his Juliet, a moth to a flame, a drop of wolfs bane,
your Belladonna has had her final fling

"Give me your hand," I asked her
So she gave her hand to me
I handled it with care and love
As I put the band to my wife-to- be

"Lend me your ears," I told her
So she stopped saying a word
She listened carefully to what I say
She never showed she's tired or bored

For hours she leaned on my shoulder
While we talk about our fate
She pressed my nose and said "I love you"
Oh, with her, I enjoyed the date

"Give me your heart," she said to me
"Oh, sorry, I can't give a heart
For you're already holding it for a year
It's already yours from the start."

"Then give me your name," she said to me
But I smiled and teased her more
"I won't give it to you without a seal
So it will be yours forevermore!"

It was many and many a year ago,
  In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
  By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
  Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
  In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
  I and my ANNABEL LEE;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
  Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
  In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
  My beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
  And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
  In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
  Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
  In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
  Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
  Of those who were older than we—
  Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in heaven above,
  Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
  Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
  Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes
  Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
  In her sepulchre there by the sea—
  In her tomb by the side of the sea.

Smiling politely in the local store,
another happy shopper that most would ignore,
but what torrid secrets lay under her grin
the tainted stigma of that hidden sin,

she wraps up her fears with the things that she’s bought,
packed into bags without a thought,
the knots in her stomach drive her insane,
for she knows that tonight there’ll  be anguish and pain,

She drinks her coffee and stares at the clock,
It’s ticking hands seem to laugh and mock,
her doleful eyes are starting to mist,
as she thinks of the bruises made by his fist,

Violently  thrown onto a bed,
pinned down and stifled as if she was dead,
pretends not to feel the hatred and pain,
as her virtue is stolen again and again,

She’s sick of the broken promises and lies,
prays to a God who never replies ,
Its all tucked away where no one can see,
longing for the day that her soul will be free.

Opposites attract.
Sameness detracts.
Love fades.
Life wanes.
Darkness can warm.
Light can freeze.
Caught in life's cycles,
Spinning outward to the end.
Caught within a breeze.

Why is darkness treated with fear?
As much is done in the light as in the dark.
Much maligned our primal senses heightened we see no light in the dark.
Yet, in the dark we are rested, in the dark we test our senses, in the dark we are even, in the dark we are one.

Foul deeds may require the blanket of dark.
But the reaper calls at any time, ready or not he will come, his scythe sweeps and you are gone.
Light or dark, love or hate in each opposite you make a whole you.
In the light we see the dark.
In the dark we see the light*.