Death & Vanilla

Another poem of mine incorporating lyrics from a song I love. This time it is from Do You Love Me? Part 2 by Nick Cave

Through this life, and this haze

“Onward, and onward, and onward I go...”

Swimming towards an end

That I will always know

My tired voice singing to no one

“And it's all downhill with a bullet...”

The trees bending down

All trying to snuff it

But I walk along through the night

“The city streets crack and a great hole forces me down...”

Through a myriad of nightmare

And an absence of sound

Down through the images of my life

“On the screen there's a death, there's a rustle of cloth...”

And the night sky re-opens

Sending me off

To continue staggering on to where I must go

“And a sickly voice calling me handsome...”

The words carried on the wind

A sound so truly, and wholly, fearsome

The shadows crawl at my hind

“And a voice that stinks of death and vanilla...”

Ratting a tin cup on the bars of my mind

Like a restless, untrained gorilla

Off the streets and into the flophouse

“The walls and the ceiling are painted in blood...”

A barrel of fire and faceless people in the corner

My inhibitions are swept away in a flood

I climb the old stairs to knock on her door

“Yes, onward and upward and I'm off to find love...”

She answers in an auburn wig and stockings full of holes

Skin white as a dove

She takes me in her arms

“Do you love me? If you do I'm thankful...”

Makes the chaos go quiet for a while

As we shed our skin for something a little more 'animal'

And I'm off again once the mating has finished

“This city is like an ogre, squatting by the river...”

Taken so much from poor little old me

Who always ended up being an unwilling giver

But no longer as I find no rest in my bed

“Dreams that roam between truth and untruth...”

A single thought on my mind

Given to me by a poison tooth

But what can you do when

“Memories become monstrous lies...?”

When you can't make no sense

Of the stars in the sky?

So I give in and let the dwellings go

“There comes a time when you just cannot deliver...”

So I close my eyes and pray my last

Before quickly pulling the trigger

A crack and then nothing,

But the radio singing on cue

“Do you love me,

Like I love you?”