And On this Spot, May only Lilies Grow . . .

I am old now, and I am grown old.
My teeth have fallen,
My hair has greyed and drifted
From this body, this worthless bag of flesh.
And my heart beats slower,
And my breathing grows shallow,
And shadows slip gently over my eyes,
Silk black veils with layers softly shifted.
And soon there shall be nothing for me,
Nothing for me but the quiet cold,
And an endless reflection on this life
This wraithlike, clinging subsistence.

Now they slip, these silken shadows slip,
For there is no brave or shining dawn.
Nor knight on horse as white as Northern winters.
None but the solid splinters
Of sunlight piercing the morning veil and lancing upon
A doomed and ghostly ship,
Tearing the purple velvet curtain of mist.
There will be no dew-speckled petal
Opening to greet the day, to be sun-kissed
To grasp for a warmth just beyond reach.
Only the cries of the gulls above these waves
That shine with the cold of black cannon metal
Thundering fire upon a distant beach,
Firing Thunder with a ghostly roar
Then breaks upon the rocky shore
Serving sailors for their graves.

Two faint outlines of souls standing,
Dancing in my mind’s inward eye
As a silk voice sings stardust.
Her head dips and swoons, landing
On my shoulder in love’s rapture and I,
On hers in loneliness, in pride, in lust.

Last I saw her, fingers slender
Tips of fingers, tips of fingers.
Calloused and rough-hewn tips
Patterns tracing patterns upon flesh tender.

The first prison is the heart
From whose fast rooms
And from whose glass bars
Men may gain no escape
From the touch of her – tips of fingers
The touch of her kiss in fingertips.
Tracing along her arms,
The scent of roses lingers
And the mark of a stranger's lips -
- tips of fingers -
- across my cheek -
Soft and cool.

This year has approached its autumn, as have I,
I grow old, for old I have always been.
As now the countryside loses color,
So now do my memories
And the dead and the dancing of the brown leaves
As they spin slowly to rest under dying trees.

Back I ride on that acrid wind,
To that long-remembered summer,
In the dirty arid desert of our youth.
Back in the heat that drained us,
When the grime clung to our bodies
And coated us as a second skin.

And should we run, if we should run
Our bodies tracing circles
In the distant desert sun.

Within the dark curtain of dust, a shape uncoiling,
The sand-borne phoenix, pure white feathers unroll,
Claws of diamond digging into inches of coal,
Black broken nest and ruby eyes boiling.

And she stands. And she stands,
Rivers of moonlight
Running through her hands,
Her eyes, virgin islands of white
Untouched sands.

There is a city of towering spires that, seen afar,
Burns with an inward, godly fire -
Diamonds shining in shadow walls,
And though it may never be approached
Along the same path once it has been departed,
Still it calls fools such as I am.


My voice grows hoarse, faint, and laced with bitter poisons,
And my eyes fade to a darkness that sees only ahead,
Through the slight hazy shrouds, through the dark fluttering veils,
And a small smile cracks these papery lips.

There came a letter today from a dark and distant land
Edged by a bottomless sorrowful sea
In whose depths lie the timber-rotted remains
Of a once-proud galleon, remnant of an age gone by –
A figurehead, spent and skeletal, and left to lie
Astride a mistress whose name has peeled into paint and stains,
Whose crew has faded, lost, into the oblivion of memory,
Now become a lightless husk, a splintered, rotted carcass,
Abandoned to a callous fate.
A letter written in a familiar hand,
Post-marked Shawnee Mission, Kansas.

A photograph, beaming, her face mirrored
In the small blond cherub held
As once I was
In her warm and loving arms.
Arms that now press thin,
Skin tight over bone.
Pale pale silk draped over bone.
And a trembling piece of paper slips
Through anxious ash-burned fingertips.

Brittle leaves of Autumn
Ride a bitter November breeze
Settling 'neath the branches
Of grey, unbending trees.

And if we should fly, if we should fly
Into the silver sheets of sadness
Of a pale and snowy sky.
A sad and sourceless glow reflected
In a ruby-crusted eye.

As thin as air, he slinks smoke-like, drifting down these yards
Eyes sunken, grave-shaded shadows set in skull of pure white lead,
Body black and draped in silk, mouth shining in sharp daggers
Fashioned from the moonlight's silver shards.
To drift down the sidewalk, to now alight
Upon the ragged beggar who staggers
And falls into the peaceful still of midnight.
As clouds slumber, drifting slowly overhead.

And where is the Death of flaming sword
Atop a milk-white steed of regal dignity,
In his mad blood-lust storming castle keeps?
And who is this damned-by-God coward who would steal
Into this room in the dark of night
And rob a woman as she sleeps?

Love erodes, as do the desert’s fortress cliffs,
Slipping through the clumsy fingers of God's hand,
Black rock crumbling into fine white sand.
White as the walls of those cities
Built upon a foundation of soft memories,
Whose solid outlines through the eons fade,
‘Till all is blurred into blameless past.
A distant desert mirage so cruel
A distant shining precious jewel,
A diamond set in a wall of shade,
That seen close-to is worthless glass,
Now collapsing, as all that’s desiccant must,
Into a silver cascade of stardust.

And my hands tremble upon the knob of the door,
And nerveless fingers grasp and turn,
And then - I find her, lying in state,
And these long-dormant passions,
As dying embers of coal once fanned will burn.
And my face, how it has changed,
The scars now faded and folded into wrinkles
And laugh-lines, and crow’s feet.
And there is a machine that rasps
And breathes in as she smiles upon seeing me.

And if I am met upon this passing with faceless scorn,
For the baubles I have gived,
If my tomb lies cold and grey and unmourned,
I can say at least I still have lived.

Now the moon is a pale and bone-white hearse,
Pulled by eight fine horses afire
With an incandescent flame that may neither burn nor purge.
And the wind that whistles through the reeds to the lonely shore,
Joins the screaming of the gulls and the lilies’ scent
And the ocean's crashing cannon roar
And song of the sparrow, and the crickets' choir
Blend into an ancient dirge;
A somber epic of lament,
A canticle of solemn verse.

In this dark and unfurnished cell
Among the fossils, among the thin layers of dust;
A man who has prayed he might find repentance,
Who has begged absolution
At the feet of the unyielding priest,
In this last, lonely prison
From whose fast rooms
And from whose glass bars
He may know only one escape,
Down a dark path of pain and broken promises,
At whose final landing lies at last,
A lonely end to this solitary sentence.

With these wings to graze
The skins of the Earth.
With these wings to trace
Patterns in the sky.
Who shall weep for me when I'm gone?
Who shall burn my ship in the Northern dawn?
And send it drifting on forever more?
To crash upon a distant, rocky shore?

And I peer through the dust and the remains
Of a near-empty apartment sealed as a tomb,
Through the streaked and starry window
And the reflection of an old man's eye
Bloodshot and afraid to die.