The pleas of desperate pilgrims
Desperate relics
reverberate day after day ‘cross this grassy plain
I've spent many a decade here
Watching, wasting
Waiting for Bernadette to appear

The world is a jilted love where the harvest always fails
and the moon is never full

Years I've waited for you to carve my name
In some hallowed place in that black forest of yours.

We once gorged on amber gateaux.
You'd stick your tongue in my mouth
And become a carnivore

Abandoned, you left a quill on a pillow
Still fresh with your dent

Now language is my master.

You, I'll trade you this blood diamond
For some magic beans
The one he gave me before he disappeared

But I am not Naomi Campbell
Minerals do not appease me

I turn the television on- Aladdin. Animated crap.
The Arabs chop off thieves' hands
You stole my heart but your hands are in tact

I wonder do you use them-
Carpenter, perhaps. Cartographer of souls.

The world makes me laugh

My lungs ought to have run dry.
Crying as I have done, uninhibited into the night
Undignified

Are you in my orbit? I wonder
Or did you prise me from your atmosphere
He who reduces me to naught but bones and
Turns me into a martyr

I summon Bernadette at the front of the grotto
Waiting for her to appear
To cure me

I know she will never come

End