a purple, aching darling
of a dawning day
unfurls her chilly fingers
over a greying grassland
to close the creaking door of night’s cabaret.

she slips her feeble sun-rays
through a cracked window pane.
dust motes, sauntering in their orbits,
float through a parched concrete bedroom
where once false love was made.

here lies a brave soldier
who fought for hell’s brigade
and shot a widower in love’s name
after which he bartered souls for simple comforts -
oranges, canned fish and pain.

and he never met his son
or saw his daughter’s face
for he had left his lover’s morning singing
and life’s sunlit meadows
for a wartime martyr's charming ways.

so he took cover in the city’s ashen shadows
from the crossfire of his mistakes
and faked his life and death and everything else,
while his sole mourner slipped into his sparse, concrete bedroom
(where he had once kissed his darkness into secrecy)
and wailed.

—

i raise the barricades
and watch the deaths from within
of day, of night, of soldiers and of sunlight
and tell myself to hold my breath
and wait.