I’m stealing through a twilit realm, the ancient pale of Whereis,
passing chambers of an Heiress
(though no need to feel embarrassed)
through a magic mystic mirror hanging curtainless.
A glimpse near naked alleyways (denuded by the moon) ex-
poses Ghosts in gauzy tunics
carving symbols, round and runic,
in distended dingy dungeons of uncertainness.
Down misty streets of cobblestone – ancestral avenues –
patchwork paths consume my shoes
(chasing foggy curlicues
twisting, twirling by in twos,
floating anywhere they choose),
leaving footprints that confuse
vagrant wispy retinues
of the threaded wooden sticks that stalk a Puppet wandering.
Condensed in drops of fantasy, distilled in evening dew,
shifting Shadows I pursue
(wearing faces I once knew,
slipping slowly from my view)
turn their backs to bid adieu
leaving stars to tempt me through
Awful Tower residues
mocking treasures time outgrew
in the birth of old from new
framing pageants in review
midst the visions of the painted past I can’t help pondering.
Contorted candelabra claw the skyline’s walled suspension
caught in twilight’s intervention
– still unlit (in stark dissension),
therefore seething with a tension
in the quiet apprehension
of the Watchman’s inattention
to the night-time’s bold pretension
to her power, not to mention,
to her hyperspace extension
(far beyond my comprehension
of the sundown’s bleak dimension) –
on exhausted beaten boulevards of foolish fretfulness.
Oblivion depletes me, voiding haste and hurried hassles,
me, a simple abject vassal,
trailing moonlit floating castles,
– fickle feet, but fingers facile
grasping straws and pendant tassels –
as I stumble through the rubble of forgetfulness.
I think I must be dreaming as I seem to see these things,
neath a sky alive with wings
(hear the Nightingale, she sings),
midst the whispered murmurings
soughed by Phantoms clad as Kings
pacing palaces in rings,
while their hapless footfall clings
to the sagging sinking sands of midnight’s splintered splattered ruins.
Entangled in the swirling leaves that spin in dizzy flurries,
(while the wind beside me scurries
as an ermined hermit hurries)
lurk my sleepy woes and worries
(glowing faint’ but growing blurry)
which, when plundered by the demon dusk, I’d left behind me strewn.
The forgery of Multitudes between the Silhouettes
(and discarded cigarettes,
neath the haunted parapets)
mock my lonely echoed steps
– mock my lonely echoed steps –
(struck like clicking castanets
– struck like clicking castanets –)
as I lace unlabeled lanes, erasing silence’ sullen treason.
The mossy stones condole with me (within the oubliettes
draped in blood and tears and sweat
sometimes dry, more often wet
quite like drops of anisette
sipped in moments one forgets
self-reproach and raw regrets)
midst the midnight minuets
and the purling pirouettes
of the fugitive Grisettes
(flaunting charms and amulets)
who, in flitting shades of arching bridges, linger longer, teasin’.
Along the When I’m drifting, but a stardust castaway,
weaving, threading by cafés
and deserted cabarets,
just a gauzy appliqué
on the river’s rippled spray,
chasing Fools along the way
through the strands of yesterday,
neath the throbbing peal of sobbing bells in spectral cloisters, quaking.
In belfries, high and haughty, alabaster Knights perform,
riding stiff against a storm,
steeped in cloudlike chloroform,
while the raven skies deform
and my shrivelled shovelled form
(rapt, while bats in steeples swarm
close to candles waxing warm)
hangs in hallowed hallways, hiding, shoulders weary, weak and aching.
Around me hover grinning masks, veiled visages of Queens,
feigning fatal final scenes
of demented doomed Dauphines
(against the scarlet sky they lean,
dreary dripping guillotines),
traced in opalescent ballrooms only tattered time remembers.
The hidden hands of Harlequins (while floating free, unseen
disbursing secrets sibylline,
amongst the manes of Halloween),
tap (on tumbrel tambourines
behind abandoned shuttered screens)
a dirge (with tattooed tones pristine)
for me (a heap in ragged jeans
in these crazy cluttered scenes),
trapped interred in toppled stone chateaus that dismal dawn dismembers.
Rogue breezes pierce, benumbing me, my ears and toes a’ freezin’
(in the Cockcrow’s purple season
as when nightmares should be easin’
and the Zephyr winds appeasin’),
so I reach for rhyme and reason,
which endeavours leave me wheezin’,
caught impaled upon the jagged edge of early morning’s breaking.
The chill evoking silver chimes of Nodomain start knelling
as the searing sun looms swelling,
and their monodies hang dwelling
in the cloud drifts’ care, revelling,
but the Sandman’s too compelling
and my weariness impelling
– since my eyelids risk rebelling,
when they’ll fall, there’s no foretelling
for the starry sky’s past telling –
as I fade beneath the flaming forge while embers tremble, waking.
