The silent creak of the small blood vessels Closing in on themselves
Restless in my scarred hands
Killing me silently

The freezing cold silence washes over me
The stillness unbroken
But for the steam rising,
This tea dying,
To warm me in a zero sum game,
wishing,
To reach the moon through miles of cool air

But
falling
  from
    this
     still
      tree,

Holding me out,
offering me to this starry sky,
Holding me out,
far from this cliff
High above shallow river water and muddy banks.

I sit here in this cradle,
Finally alone again,
without attachments
Finally myself again,
lighting a cigarette
to clear the silence,
to ward off the cold...

And as this smoke
Fills my head
Warms my chest

My heartbeat fades from my ears
Hearing unwarranted storms in the silence
Born from the swirling smoke in my thoughts
I think,
'Who am I now that I am myself again?'

He opened his eyes in a night sky,
Waxed black and fed by dews darkness,
Ebon and incarnadine mists consumed the air,
One hundred ravens in coracinet played

Soft music gliding her pale feet,  
Quivering a flutter she swayed dreaming,
Before his black oak door,
Long his finger enchanted the path,

Fluttering onward in rapture,
The bell rings and rings,
Come dance, dance with thee,
Enchanted ye be

Her naked withering pallid body,  
Of silk and chiffon he enfolded,
Her lips tasting amber and figs ripening,
Coruscating maidens swirled an epitome of dance

Not until she was dark grown repentance,
Renouncing all others,
Only then he shall devour upon her,
A bargain be struck,

Swept away riven by her dreaming plea,
My lady crowned dance with thee,
Beholdeth spelled she be troth,
And the Raven King hungered upon her lips

Forever radiant enchanted black,

── Unto the dance of night, his eternally bound


© Arnay Rumens 2015