Chasing dangerous clouds
Down a dangerous road
Twilight hath come
As has the storm
I grip onto the steering wheel
Knuckles turning white
I chase a hallowed and holy love
On a replaceable summer evening

Fitful rest in the place of slumber
A jolted start
Lulled by darkness
It was too early
It was too late
The night was dark
Then, I heard it in the distance:
An unidentified voice

Sweet, silver song sung
Solitude in solemn shadow
I could not identify the singer
Neither male nor female

Peculiar voice in a peculiar morning
An hour past midnight
I did hear the song
And then something caught my fear
I hath been taken by the ear

Were they a Siren of a tarred river
Flowing through a small town
Tempting me to the street
And turn me into a meal sweet
Or perhaps a Banshee
Irish crying, sobbing,
Mistaken for a singer
When they are a harbinger

Distant, faint,
And indescribable
Words and babble
But a song nonetheless
But a lullaby nonetheless

The last time I was here
It had been free drinks on the house
It had been a celebration
A taunt
This was how far we’ve come
This is how far we have yet to go

You can’t catch us
For we’re having too much fun
Flirting, talking, chatting
Ideas and hopes
For this year
And the year it had been

It’s different now
Solemn without solace
The haphazard roof
Over haphazard concrete
Where music blasts
And is not played
Where thoughts are delayed

For thoughts bring tears
And tears bring pity
I can’t stand it
The twilight air
Suffocates me
As people stop
And stare

I want to stay
I want to go
I want to live another day
And I want to know
What is beyond the boundary

Let’s have a party
In a building turned funerary
Barbed wire fences
And railroad tracks
Life is seen between cracks
I’ve come so far
And yet I haven’t progressed at all

A waxing crescent moon,
Canescent, anxious light
Illuminates the eerie sky
Free from shadow, free from stars
But not free from sin
This is the realm of illusory serenity
Under celestial blessing
I walk the path I’ve always known

A single road
A lonely road
Gravel cuts the underside
Of my aching feet
As I march under moonlight
So that I may
Taste the sweet and sour
The good and the bad
The grief
And the peace

My first love did not take me by the hand but rather by the ear
He was a ghostly music man who sang of sweet violence
He would chide and chide again of my innocence, my ignorance, my insolence
Through ghastly and grief-ridden streets, he would lead me here.

My first love was my first enemy though,
Gnashing teeth and pointed tongues lashing upon each other
For long time come, this hatred and distaste would not fade low
Forever in stinging words but there was change soon, a change to bid him my lover.

First breach of a tiled, misty dream, he has earned no right to my mind’s unreality
Again and again, his visage haunts my most inner eye
Second breach of a buzzing, glitzy dream, it has become a wish of reality,
Strange and unsettling, distorted and pale; a most convincing lie.

Unfair September echoes in my heart as I reach for his memory
An ethereal grip on a hand that is no longer there; belonging to a beachside now
How I long for a scent or touch of remembrance of him upon me
Practically lands away from him, fog kissed hills of the girth realm glower.

We are but fools in divided courts: winter and summer
Belonging more to each other than the seasons of those who divide us
We hail to ourselves and each other, giving bitter thanks to our monarchs in murmur
Dangling upon a cliffside, will we or won’t we? There is no try, only lust.

I long for a simple kind of closure.
Wherein grief does not desecrate the faded memories if once happy folk, now ghosts
I long for a battening down of cross-hatches of emotions and composure
Wherein tears do not tear away the ghosts in my mind where dwells my sacred host.

Confusion burgeons and blossoms in my mind
Excess of people draw close to me but there is only one for the companionship I seek
Do I love him, do I wish to make him mine?
Through embarassing lovelorn writings, at my own heart I dare to peek.

My first love was a ghostly music man, forever marching off unto paths that wind.
By my ear, he would lead me heavy as lead
Through untold streets where grief was forever upon mankind
Through streets that did not exist, only in song, only upon my lips and in said.

Face as pale as snow, hair like ebony, and lips red;
Red as the blood pricked from the dainty finger which bled
From the waters of a treacherous womb, the fairest one of all was born
To compassionate father, the King, and wicked *****, the Queen; forlorn
By the news from mystic mirrors vile with dark knowledge, the fairest one of all
She would be the one to rule them all beneath a gentle rule; herald of the Queen’s fall.

Though the insidious murmurs of her Mirror, upset the Queen, she did not remain
“Forlorn” for long. No, she used the time to gather magics, beneath the sane
Façade and the façade of tears when it became known the King had died
Her daughter, grown to ten and four years, to be moved off of her head
Then the Queen, the Queen alone, would have beauty and power.
To her throne room, did the Queen invite a Huntsman upon the hour
In which was meant to mourn the good man’s loss
The soul of the King immortalised in bronze wherein sickly moss
Did grow, a dour shawl that did crawl around his eyes
Much like his mistress who for fourteen years did feed him arsenic and lies.

“Take her heart so I may feast upon it; proof of her death,” did instruct the Queen
Unto her henchman, the Huntsman, she did instruct and he left. The sheen
Of determination emanated from him, illuminating his understanding that would turn.
Into the forest, he did chase the Princess until he cornered her; looming over her,
Her beauty sing sweet sorrow upon whimpering lips and a charismatic curse
Was laid upon the huntsman’s eyes
And from that, he could take no lives
So, he felled a boar and fed the heart to the Queen.
But the flesh upon her tongue, it did not taste it ought to mean.

The Princess fled further into the forest and happened upon a melancholic hut
That housed seven dwarves, wary folk at first but
Upon hearing the Princess’ begging, they let her stay and for them,
She cleaned their abode and once cleaned, the Huntsman’s deception came clean also
And so, the Queen grew vengeful and spurned a deep spell to **** her daughter, so
She travelled into the forest and disguised herself with the clothes of hags
A poor, poor hag in need of money – money for an apple red as blood
The Princess, fooled and compassionate, took from a hand with rancid skin that sags.

A single, crisp bite was all it took for the Princess with lips of blood and face of snow
To perish, from her hand the poisoned apple withered and in a glass box the dwarves laid
Her to rest, her final rest, and from her porcelain hand the apple tumbled,
And with that echoic fall, the Queen rose once more: beauty, fame, power: she has it all.

And for the existence of such a miraculous corpse to prove true, rumour became myth
And myth inspired Prince to go out and search for the truth clouded in mist
Within a deep, damp forest run foul with monstrous foliage, the Prince found her
He found her with the one of ivory face and scarlet lips; hair in inky curls
From her glass casket, he removed the lid and his decency; assailed by
The perfume of ever youthful flowers, he leaned down next to her and with a gentle lie
He told himself she was asleep. That’s all she was: a peaceful, deathly sleep;
And upon those perk, scarlet lips, he gave her a kiss that was deep.

Tongue within her cold, rotting mouth.
He kissed her and he kissed her thorough, hoping his warm breath would breathe life
Into this long-dead corpse; perfect as though blood remained in motion in her vein
But from her glass coffin, the Princess did not stir so the Prince’s ghastly act was in vain
With the back of his hand, he smeared her memory and the myth remained myth.

The poor Princess was laid to her rest, her final rest, in a glass coffin; a perfect corpse
A corpse that did not wither;
A corpse with blood red lips, hair of ebony, and skin snow white.

I have only seen myself as a beautiful artwork once in my life,
It had been the advent lovely Spring of sweet sixteen,
There is a photo of someone else’s mind in which I am the subject, rife
With calculated gorgeousness, the white blouse and powder blue skirt
And I had been wearing black ballet flats; a day upon my feet had left me hurt
But the enchanted, oil forest before me had healed my eyes and entranced me
That pose, holding onto myself with ribbons in my hair, someone could see
A beauty that which I have never known since.

Into the heart of the Prince
Into the hearts of all the folk for she was a fairy tale heroine,
Cinderella, lovely lady of ashes, had glass slippers
And upon such toity-toity footwear, she had slipped
Yet, it had been such fragility that would unite her with her love

Will I be united with such grace, such love for myself, if I hold onto my ballet flats?
After all, I have not once seen this grace, such love for my own self since sweet sixteen
Since the foolhardy winds of chilly, oceanside Spring;
Where upon the Museum modern, I saw myself as timeless artwork
Admired and appreciated by all; much like the lovely lady of ashes whose slippers
Have walked her beloved soul into the hearts of all; into the best of time

Yet, these beloved shoes of mine
Have seen so much better of time
For I can see through the soles wherein holes
Have shown where I have worn my own souls
In bitter wanderings and light-hearted adventure; so many type of walk
For a single lass, I could not talk
Of all the places and thoughts these shoes have led me astray within
Of the beauty that had once sunken in

How am I to part?
How am I to part with such faithful companions through all my wanderings of
Yonder years soon to come asunder as I am no longer sweet sixteen,
As I am no longer before entrenched trees of oil, elevated in buildings upon
A chilly, Springtime by the sea I’ve only known in passing afternoon
In black ballet flats; not unlike the glass gussied slippers of lovely cinders

Am I not unlike Cinderella?
For whom would she be if she had not received the night of her life
As carried upon the fragile spurned glass of her magic slippers
For whom had reunited her with her love, the foot fetishist Prince;
Lovely lady of ashes would be just that: lady of ashes,
Worked to beyond the bone; dressed in rags, head in clouds,
Dreaming of opportunity squandered in her slippers of magic glass

She would be like me.
She would be like me, contemplating her toes in birdsong prose
She would be like me, wondering when she would feel as refined as a classic artwork
A beautiful timeless painting with grace and poise without rival supposed

If I part with these worn soles which have born my souls cross
My journeys long, will I ever be at loss
Over mine own image rendered beautiful: my own body rendered beautiful to my eyes?
How can such skin-deep bliss exist without my black ballet flats?
How will mine own eyes recognise my beauty
If it were not for dainty small feet slotted into impractical, magical glass slippers
In want of my dear and precious black ballet flats.