“Stone painted red…”

I.

 

Stone painted red with

hushed colors,

soiled with vacant, cavernous eyes;

 

a hollowed-out pretention of word,

carved into stone,

molded into eternal repose;

 

the nerve endings never connected

and paint-rubbed raw

to be circled

 

about the orbit of an eye.

 

II.

 

recovering what remained before…

before anyone says a thing;

a love-ridden slip of a girl;

 

she makes such a lovely trophy for the night;

love is so much colder than death, said The Virgins,

and I somewhat agree

 

or at least one in the same;

hour-glasses fall from shelves

toward salty shore-lined whims—

 

ne’er-do-wells live close at bay.

 

III.

 

with every tear drop,

every banshee,

every simple nerve

 

to receive the shock of how I now see;

us, and all the tenderhearted cognomina,

under sheets,

 

in bed,

under love’s spell, is now

inside each other’s hearts—

 

painted on their walls.

 

IV.

 

the casualness of it all—

makes martyrs of us both;

instead of red paint

on my hands and stone in my mouth:

 

something new covers my eyes, sighing:—let’s go at light!—let’s go at dark!