I will know you only because you are known to me deep down beneath the subtle shadows carved permanently upon your deceivingly angelic face sculpted by an artist nameless to none but the heavy slab of stone he used to create an ache I’ve come to want to know as you whose soft and silent rolling voice where from there springs the torrents of a turmoil melting like wax in the mixed up chasm of your mind the destroyer of your smile the reminder of bad times that causes me to know you and from where you come riding in bare-back jet-black hair flying on the hated molten roaring riveted steel furnace of inner anguish again and again you beautiful deadly diamond black jewelry rose of unworldly charm and perfected pain.
II
This is how I know you in the steamy swelter of the nightfall’s stifling bluish pall you and I alone somewhere anywhere but probably nowhere between the silken smooth heavenly legs of here and there inside the broken smoked crystal chandelier of an ancient chamber room illuminated by the flicker of more than fifty slowly disappearing jutting candle-flames I know you because you make yourself known to me on the black-satin wrinkled bed-sheets that we lie writhing around upon like two dying dancing angels being swallowed by the suffocating oil of a shame we bother created just like gods or dancing dancers dancing slowly dying in the pallid ***** fuming fog …dancing with the gods.
you are as I know you silhouetted in the silence of our ecstatic shattered sighs as we fly through lust’s futile passions where we lie, we lie we lie…
III
You are crawling across the one-thousand mile mattress stalking towards me starvation’s fire fuels your steely-sharp brown eyes leopard-like your lithe, tiny olive-brown body poised ready to pounce ready to strike arrayed in skin-tight crimson lace deadliness flashing on your face your ******* dark and pointy ******* feel fit for me to fed the song— I smile— then with healthy, stealthy fury you leap and pin me down trapping me between these shiny sheets of coal and your sweeping feline glowing perfumed-prison hair polished glossy ruby fingernails dig deep into my massive arms ivory razor-baring teeth bite my hips my neck my chest my thighs you stop just in time to devour me delightfully rocking, reeling in the sounds of us around the intoxicating scent of your flaming fountain-*** colognes my livid throbbing burning ***** I yell I try to scream I want to cry …but instead, drift off to dream.
IV
You lie awake aiting watching and waiting allowing your imagination and your hands on a journey to your ever-lingering flaming fury far beyond the heights of hunger’s call just as we have done no doubt without each other for a long time in the cold in and out up and down back and forth body arches thighs uptight muscular calves quivering toenails clenching like an eagle’s talons on the bed --lift high your sweet holy offering to the air!
Hands wet and warm fly from the glistening magic perfect patch of forever music that makes me want to weep you scream I awake we breathe deep we go back. Repeat the scene.
V
Pre-dawn purple painted brush-strokes streak the sky framed by the window where I know I will find you in nothing more than a gown of sleek vermillion light-chamois that displays the room glow striking at your body’s faint outline your slender legs your precious girlish hips that golden chain around your waist Divine your blushing tearless chiseled cheeks I arise and walk behind you run my trembling fingers up your spine I still don’t really know you as your sighs compete with mine you reach around and lead me away behind a peeling splintered door warped and withered with dismay where you will teach me how to paint by spilling your blood in splatters upon the floor in said consequence I calmly take the blade from your tiny talking hands pull your slashed and sliced torn wrists to my tongue and slowly lick with a lingering criminal kiss the dripping cuts that begin to fade and go away forever in the day now that the wounds have disappeared becoming scarless bloodless sere I can but heal your beaten lost youthful body although I cannot convince you that I care. Daylight here.
VI
I know now that I know now that I know you and in the **** with suntanned bodies wind kiss-hissing through our hair we walk side by side on the blistering shoreline sand avoiding bits of broken glass bottles one by one if we can slowly strolling to the edge of the abysmal eternal emerald omniscient ocean-waves breaking ttundering blanketing our feet spraying its mist upon our hands I stop you sprint on diving headlong at the deep the foamy water roars and roars you emerge and approach the shore standing straight along beside me to stare at a pair of grayish seagulls circling in the air squawking songs about themselves when before the breathing of a minute one bird drops dying dead to feed the never-ending belly of the sea the other screeches viciously mourning you look at me and then I come to know now how to know you now that you have at last known me as your part your pink and precious lips for the first time we will ever kiss as you finally cry for our reality.
That is not sand left clinging to your cheeks Just the salty tears we need To set us free.
Now you can bury you and me.
(Threnody means “funeral chant.”)
D. Conors c. November 1994 All original documentation has been preserved.