Remnants of love
are the last breaths
of the narcissus:
lifeless, black petals,
eyes gouged red from crying,
and inked pitch stains from dying…
Flowers drift and flowers sigh, all erstwhile
emotion from wilting lies that leave signals in the thorns
below that prick at tender lesions to show wherein deceit
and disease has spread to choke a love as yet unwed.
Scattered petals bare no perfume just cluttered haste
of abandonment strewn like sadness across a waste ground’s gloom
in the clinging vines of ivy rose – your stinging charms
still suffocate and presuppose, squeezing the life from all that’s new,
leaving nothing behind but necrotic hue.
Naivety lost and innocence shed makes me the bud
whose sorrowful dread was nurtured and revitalised, but far too late
I realised; so take these dew drops cried anew to moisten
seeded ground for you, to tend, to fret to watch them grow,
and when full bloom of youthful woe is within your grasping
hand, I will return in spirit like a flame’s nebulous glow –
to fire this, Svengali’s land.
As it Comes 