My heart was promised long ago
To a man known not by me
When I was young and he was old
and I not his Anabel Lee

I forsaken
on this path untaken
bound to wander
and Never be Free

Of the Grip I feel,
of a man who can only be half real,
to the Likes of Me.

Wherever he lay,
Deeply I pray,
He May never know of Me.

While I dream of day
And hear God say,
A Blessing and a Curse unto
Thee

To love with a love
that is more than love,
but never be allowed to utter
the treasured "we".

Glimpses of faces
Leaving the bitterest Traces
To mock and taunt the waking of me.

Searching For
the Wide Open Door
of a Home with
No Vacancy

Winter's Cold
and Summer's Scauld
Are no strangers to me.

The days drag on,
knowing this bitter song,
plays on, endlessly.

I wait for the sleep,
with a lover's cold creep,
to kiss my lips,
grab my fingertips,
and Squelch the Promise Sworn Not By Me

For I know not how long,
I can have courage and be strong
Knowing I'm not anyone's Anabel Lee

I was shocked when she died
I always thought I would go first.
I was faithful even after forty years.
of our mundane marriage.

I know she did not love me
In fact I know I did not love her.
You are besotted with Anabel
She said so many times.

But Anabel was married
almost as long as I was.

I never lied and said
it was not true
Because it was.

After she passed away
Anabel's husband left her
He moved to the west coast
and played lounge piano
In a bar.

She came over to see me
Not carrying a *** of stew
Or a cake
like the other lonely vultures.

She was so beautiful
So much what
I had always wanted
Well it's time she said.
They both have gone.

She looked
so beautiful to me.
Kiss me honey
she purred.
I held her close to me.
Too close
Her softness
was beyond my limits.

I placed my lips
close to hers.
A fire burned in me
Like nothing before.
It was need and want.
covered in gasoline
And a match
applied igniting
an inferno.

Then on the mantle
I saw her picture
the one when
we got married.
She was so
beautiful then.
I am sure it
smiled at me.

I pulled away
from Anabel.
A magnet
that had held me
for nearly forty years.
And I started to weep
I realized after
Losing her.
I loved my wife
beyond belief.

My brother finds comfort in calculators.
He assigns every number a name.
He believes that they add up to certainty and he is upset with fractions that remain.
So I examine these maps with my eyes, and at best I can trace with my finger
all the way to that town where she went in an attempt to forget the cracks and the lines of my face.

So Jetsabel cleaned out the closets for me and she piled up the boxes in the hall.
Tomorrow when she wakes she'll come take them away and they'll never haunt me again;
but it is still hard to sleep with the moon's heavy beams.
I run barefoot to the backyard, just to freeze in my place by the rod iron gate;
too afraid and ashamed to advance.

Today I walked through the snow and found a field of headstones.
They were in rows like the weeks in calendars where each box is a day you can never escape
without pills or the poison of sleep.
These memories leak from these faucets that weep.
Hot tears splash against the shower floor and I stand in the steam as if inside a dream--
I can see her again by the sink.
From behind the bathroom mirror she pulls a thermometer and places it under my tongue.

She said, "You're as pale as a sheet. You look awful, my sweet. Lay down and wait for the sun."
So I stayed in that bed. She brought me water and read each night from a volume out loud.
She whispered soft poetry. Her favorite was Anabel Lee.
And those words, like these drugs, comforted me.
But the clocks kept waving their hands
and she couldn't understand why temperature would never drop.
And though she promised with tears that she would always be here,
I heard truth like the sounding sea.

I said, "My Arienette, how soon you forget this house will never be your home,
and you will leave in the fall when the trees become graves and their colors lie dead in the grass."
Gold and green torture me like the lies I believe too easily.

Oh my Jetsabel, look at this hell that I have made.
If you want, maybe drop by sometime-- put some flowers on my grave
so that I will look beautiful in my silent sepulchre.
Yeah, that's fine. Throw some dresses away. I don't want anything of hers.
For the moon never shines and the stars never rise without bringing me dreams,
haunted by the ghosts of those bright eyes.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me

Spirit within my spirit reminds me of a place called home.
A place more esthetical and historical than Rome.
I'm staring at a goddess, and her eyes gives me an impression she's seen more than enough
The scars in her wrist told a story that she had it rough.

But then August came
And she re-lived all the horror once more
She aggressively fell on the ground as before
And she was drowning in a pool of her own blood as her screams decorated the floor.

Her silence was golden, only the walls knew of her nakedness
After the dark left and morning came, she wore a mask perfect enough to cover the sadness.

She's stranded in a deserted place
She finds comfort in her own sholders
The warmest place she ever knew changed on her and turned her colder.

Like trees in autumn she's falling apart
She lost everything, and all that's left was a broken heart.

She fell in a trap hiding behind a smile
Deceptive busturd enjoyed dominance, instead he showered her with hurt and punches till she couldn't take no-more. giggles he promised, but instead she cried enough to surpass the Nile.

She had the spirit of a punching bag
Because after all the thrashing and assault, she still had the strength to handle more.
And now she's idle on the floor like before

But unlike before these time she's DEAD

At thirteen years old,
I learn that
not all mermaids are like Ariel--
some mermaids are sirens,
femme fatales of the seven sea
who lure sailors to their drownings
with sweet, nectared voices.

Still, I wish to don the life of a siren,  
whose danger appears
dizzyingly seductive to me.
I have become fascinated
with the dark and the peculiar,
you know,
and, as a result, I too
have undergone a dark, peculiar
evolution--
and, as literature has dictated,
such a character as myself
is to be scrutinized
under an omniscient perspective:

She wears thick, purple eyeliner
and dresses only in
heavy blacks and deep blues,
an abrupt transition
from her previous adoration for
pastels and ruffled sleeves.
But it is not only her countenance
that is indicative of this disturbed youth--
there are the books she reads,
tales of death, gore, and
other macabre eccentricities.
Her favourite titles
are those by Edgar Allan Poe.

How suiting then,
that she should be an
Anabel Lee in the making--
"her highborn kinsmen came
  And bore her away...
To shut her up in a sepulchre
  In this kingdom by the sea.-- "
she just doesn't realize it  yet--
that she is a drowning girl impending,
that she was never to be the siren, after all,
but the poor fool
who succumbed to the siren's
dreadful tides.