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Poetry
by Lou Graves circles of irreverence there is a place between here and midnight where angels dance in circles of irreverence their broken prayers like echoes of echoes their broken songs like ashes like the ashes of armageddon spread over the oceans and the rooftops and on the flowers on the graves of suicides there is a silence between us as broken and thin as the bathroom mirror where i watch myself shaving at four in the morning, drunk and pious and broken my shadow like oceans cast and vomited on the edges of everything, like prayer shadows rejoicing in the irreverent beauty of a silence that fades and falls and falls in my safe haven which is sometimes a palace or a prison of decadence bleeding moments within moments like broken silence like silence broken and twisted and left to hang and hang and still staring out from within the mirror i hear broken echoes of her voice and her song and prayer and all the rest that falls between here and midnight between the mirror and myself shaving silence where once we had gotten drunk and danced through the mad and starving night like marionettes the night haunted by voices and visions of burning shadows and sacrifice visions of irreverence and of ashes like snow settling on the twisted streets and on the graves of suicides visions of broken prayer and song and angels dancing in circles of irreverence singing us drunk and dancing like marionettes her haunted eyes like burning oceans my voice echoed and burning in her hands and her hands on fire and held high like sacrifices to the skies, to the gods and oceans her lipstick blood red and smeared her face a pale candle white and the thin veil lifted to receive the ashes of armageddon and be baptized in them visions of burning tarot cards scattered as we danced like marionettes and moved ghostlike and full of drunken grace floating and falling to fall and float and float like ashes falling again and again and we danced past the love tree, past the tolomato cemetery drunk and singing and pious two broken things, wounded, drowning in the heavy night dancing our laughter an echo of the nothingness and the irreverence that dragged us down, that dragged us down somewhere between here and midnight there is a circle of angels around us dancing with track marks on their arms and their veins filled with junk and ashes and still we dance like drunk marionettes and still we dance, drunk like marionettes her clothes at the foot of the bed pretending i was asleep i felt her slide out from under the sheets and i watched her finding her clothes (scattered on the floor at the foot of the bed) and begin to dress first sliding her panties (left leg then right) then her bra (left arm then right) cupping the breasts, reaching behind her back, fastening. then her blouse (left arm right arm) leaving the front unbuttoned she dressed almost like a slow and rhythm -less dancer, like a feather whose only rhythm, whose only sense of beat or measure was a slight breeze and then she caught me watching her “what are you doing?” she said, and i laughed but refused to look away and she went on dressing as though i wasn’t there, as though i was as familiar as the house cat. i purred from under the covers “like what you see?” she said, as though we were as familiar as an old pair of shoes just sitting somewhere in some corner somewhere just sitting and she dressed and left and i saw her again less than two days later and i watched her un -dress, slowly (left arm then right) (left leg then right) leaving her clothes in a lifeless heap at the foot of the bed |
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