You wanted a love story, sweetheart—
well, I’m an unwritten tragedy;
hand me a skull and I’ll monologue
while Rome burns.
We’re two acts in and falling fast,
we’re half a city down and soon
there’ll be nothing but ashes.
You wanted a love song, baby—
I’ll sing to you in a minor key,
harmonies in the rain under neon stars,
screaming in tune with flowers in your lungs
and blood in your hair
and city lights and city lights and
city lights.
You wanted a love letter, honey—
“Dear Heartbreak,
I’ve got purple bruises on my chest
where my prose hits me. I’ve got
a mess of clichés and a dark and stormy night
and a pinch of melodrama,
no talent but I’m trying, honest.
I don’t suppose you could maybe
unravel me a little?
Cut me open like a knife through butter?
Maybe then I’ll bleed words;
maybe then the poems will spill out of me,
entrails unravelling.”
You wanted a love poem, darling—
meet me in your aspect and your eyes
at ten o’clock tonight. Rome’s burning, baby,
and all our lions are loose. No time for
sonnets; we’ll climb the Colosseum with
our flowers and our songs and
we’ll deny the gaudiness
of the day.
You wanted love, sweetheart—
I’ll give you everything I am:
a burnt-out city,
a soliloquy in G minor.
I’ll play til my fingers bleed,
sing til my voice gives out and
maybe—
maybe
it’ll do.
byron’s “she walks in beauty“ is the one i’m wittering on about in the fourth stanza.
