The Broken Promise Ring~

The village lay

in the comfort of my silken gown

unchanged

unmoved by the decadent allures of the shiny world outside;

I learned to write at the feet of crones

and inside the mouth of gentlemen who bit down to the bone

in the travesty of angels

come to fall in love

across a meadow

teaching me how to be a selfish china doll

unworried by a burning kiss

or the razor edge of a wing's tip

                  

He was so unconcerned with my fast past

how moonlight ate my skin in the moment

a bouquet of violets

scattered in the spilled wine of the dinner

untouched before the fire

unmoved by my fingertips lingering across the thigh of the woman

he'd brought out of the nightingale arbor

of a jazz club

to delight my silken

husky throat

with her ripe mouth

 

The city shimmered

immersed up to my hips

in beads of lies

and sensual meditations before Bast in all her gold;

I remember Acapulco

indented in a tropical drink

with tiny umbrellas

and caramel kisses

inside the deep grooves on the backs of his hands

dark eyes into me

as I tried to shake his love out of my braids with the starfish

on a blanket of sand

 

She whispered there was no such thing

as a moment forgotten

or eaten with chopsticks across the Nile;

the dichotomy of us was surreal

she was a Kafkaesque mermaid

tossing arias in between my breasts with diamonds

from the old districts in New York City

 

The world won me

choose me

destroyed

and rebuilt me

when all I wanted was to be yours;

but the violence of your prayers meant nothing to the Shinto monks

when automatic weapons emblazoned your night

as I crawled to your company

through a tide of silks across the bed

into a pool of blood

and stories

kissing the bone spine torn from your back

bullets everywhere

 

I was destroyed

for a while

dying for your company

unable to scrub the blood out of my pores;

I stalked the nights

and Asian enclaves where your killers stroked the backs of a million Benjamins

traitors

slaves to beauty

to a little girl's pastry soul with dangerous filling

 

And I stalked the shimmers and the incense inside an Aladdin’s lamp

until Mr. S_______ pulled me out of my kimono blaze

and fed me back into the world of schools

and uniforms

and everydays;

but the blade never dulled

and the strut became more hippy

glittering in shimmy waves

eating every man alive

until the husk

and bones

fell

into the pile

of my battlescape

and broken promise ring

I still keep wrapped in velvet dreams

waiting for him to wake up out of a pool of blood and bones

spilled in 1978

 

 

copyright:2009vssmd/pa.inc

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 

excerpt from. . . .

 

 

 

Reviews

[alan peter kelly]

surreal dichotomy...haunted hounded murdered by history...sweltering bloodied...overwhelmingly evocative of something dark and staring coldly out from amongst the beautiful foliage...blank eyed to a sear of any kind...steeped in Guernica type bombardment...something so profoundly sad....and ressurected with every read...

[Robin]

felt ~

[Ed Hart]

when we are born we are all given a broken promise ring...if we find someone (no matter when or where) who will exchange rings with us, it breaks the spell, and then we can write poetry like this, and still come up for air