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Oh down at the tavern
the children are singing
around their round table
and around me still.
Did you hear what it said?
I only said
how there is a pewter urn
pinned to the tavern wall,
as old as old is able
to be and be there still.
I said, the poets are tere
I hear them singing and lying
around their round table
and around me still.
Across the room is a wreath
made of a corpse's hair,
framed in glass on the wall,
as old as old is able
to be and be remembered still.
Did you hear what it said?
I only said
how I want to be there and I
would sing my songs with the liars
and my lies with all the singers.
And I would, and I would but
it's my hair in the hair wreath,
my cup pinned to the tavern wall,
my dusty face they sing beneath.
Poets are sitting in my kitchen.
Why do these poets lie?
Why do children get children and
Did you hear what it said?
I only said
how I want to be there,
Oh, down at the tavern
where the prophets are singing
around their round table
until they are still.
Leave me be;
I’ll die if I leave here.
Chained to the bedpost, my body is
no longer your sanctum. Every inch
of my skin is paying its debt back
to the earth. I’m dust.
I’m going from whence I came;
the clock is turning back its arms,
as far as it can go; mothers are closing arms
round their boys in embrace;
the rain falling upwards;
conversations are being unspoken;
(lies are being untold)
((your heart yet unbroken)),
the seeds are going
back to sleep; I
am going back to sleep.
11/18/15
 Apr 2016 E N Duffield
Gabrielle
I am no different than that boy who claims to love you
Hand in hand we spill our hearts in slurred proclamations
Dressed in black we are mirrored shadows, hollow lovers, the singers of night songs
Choking on ink and blood, we scrawl a final plea for peace
Or at least the pieces to put ourselves back together

— The End —