We met upon the face of the moon,
And yet we felt far from alien,
Talk flowed like cider,
And affection persisted like cigar smoke,
A dose of gorgeous hot chocolate,
An ochre beauty,
Piercings and lightning bolts,
Something of a novel experience for this clown,
A royal flush of nightlife fate,
I didn’t expect to meet you,
A new empress,
Or the closest a serf could expect,
That night.
Do you ever wonder what a fireplace sees?
From its brickwork oubliette,
Blushing in its soft heat,
What secrets it bears witness to,
The feelings put out into the universe,
Caresses and kisses upon the shaggy rug,
The hidden trysts before its flame,
The small moments meaning the most,
A living room rising to its name,
This choleric witness,
Do you think it laughs?
Fire displaying its cruel nature,
Flickering in hilarity,
With its charcoal friends,
Or maybe it tries to warn them?
Crackling in its mayday throes,
Energetic yet impotent,
Within its hearth prison cell.
That time at the lake,
As the mist looked on expectedly,
When I cried sad crystals,
And they flew skyward,
Joining hands with constellations,
It was then that I knew,
As my eyes still spilled celestial ink,
That the night sky was built on hurt lovers,
Cosmic beauty derived from pain,
The night was an anthology of romantic tragedies,
A sky of stories,
A landscape painting of bloodily cut diamonds,
Bled on to the firmament by the brush of our tears.
Let me tell you a story,
A yarn of spies and the spied upon,
Of a world under our own,
A world of shadow and masks,
A world we are not privy to,
For the better,
She is a woman,
But also an agent,
A clandestine weapon with fake lashes,
All false wigs and suppressors,
A dame of deception,
She had slain tyrants while wearing unfamiliar faces,
She once had a lover,
But the flag stole him under its yolk,
He is a man,
But also a tool,
An extension of his nations left hand,
All handguns and sabotage,
An artist of wetwork,
No foreign dossier is safe from his gloves,
He longed for a normal life once,
But the flag kept drawing him back,
It’s a tale of two nations,
A love story spelled out in gunshots and dead drops,
Of two souls under opposing masters,
Once brought together by their humanity,
But rent asunder by the flags inhumanity,
Forced in future to kiss via crosshairs.
As they say,
The face is a masquerade mask,
And the eyes are windows to the soul,
But windows can be boarded up and blockaded,
And a masks purpose is to deceive,
You never know the intentions within,
The bad aura that permeates its design,
The gentlest smile can hold the most umbrage,
A held stare can be pure amorous obfuscation,
Cordial words can hide poison within,
The back of your skull often suspects something,
A defence mechanism for your peace of mind,
That sixth sense hints at hidden danger,
You’ll wish you had heeded the warnings,
That imperceptible lightning of negativity in the air,
The bad vibes,
Rancor hovering about an angel.
A pair of flames were born,
Twins in their splendour,
But combusted too far betwixt,
Their heat is similar but miles apart,
Flames of a different paradigm,
A different kind of heat in each heart of embers,
One azure and the other ruby,
They are attracted over fields of poppies,
Viridian yet barren all at once,
A yard of barbed wire and pitch,
Will they find one another?
Or will they exhaust themselves?
Expended in the danger of it all?
Her words were as an errant furnace,
Viciously melting me down,
Magma in her breath,
A suns core of spite and rage,
Each word burns hotter than the last,
Broiling blow after blow,
Tangent after criticism,
Tangerine flowers and brass fall from me,
Depositing hearts and memories in scoria on the floor,
I am now only a pile of ash,
Bestrewn across this wasteland of a life,
Tired and stale,
But this won’t be the end,
Not this time,
That same fire that destroyed me shall remake me,
I’ll be a phoenix this time,
Erupting like a volcano to new heights,
And I’ll lay waste to your animus this time.
That prevailing miasma,
It hits your eyes first,
Injected by longing gazes met,
Washing like a tsunami to your heart,
Insidiously at first,
Veins burning in the passionate causticity,
Propagating in your chest and thoughts,
Euphoric over time,
An addiction like any other,
Racing pulses and endorphins,
White-hot and devious,
A venom taking its course,
Destructive in the end,
As toxins are wont to be,
Culminating in cardiac collapse,
Your heart split like a vase,
Shards lost in love letters unsent,
And those same eyes bleed aqua in turn.
Do you still hear her voice?
A solemn call in the brume,
As the nights grow more beastly,
As the winds grow ever in tempo,
And winters spectre peers from behind trees,
Do you feel her caress?
By the fireside,
Under that sedate harvest eve,
As the atmosphere swims in sandalwood,
And the breeze tears up that amber carpet,
Autumn comes every year,
And it is a season of entropy,
So tell me,
Do you still hear her voice,
Upon autumns mournful boughs?
WorldofHarley 