I pass the iron gates,
unidentified,
apparition
of the mirrored self.
If you could hear me,
you'd throw a sharp stone
out of the arced,
shined windows,
but you couldn't
reach me
You'd try so hard,
but you'd never
understand.
I see you alone,
singing harrowing songs,
they fly like crows
through
the smoke-filled air,
through
wasp-infected ether.
After the noon,
you wear clothes
of women you robbed.
From their hair
you knit your daily
prayers that you feed
the limbo-lipped
mouth of darkly dead...
so they yield the sight
to you ...
so you could
build a fortress
out of your wishes
to swallow each
and every soul.
In the twilight,
your fat fingers
drum the swell
and fall of
your hunger
on black keys
of ill-tuned piano —
it howls hard notes,
sickening the hours
of children born
to be unborn.
I pass the iron gates,
in the night,
unidentified,
apparition
of duplicated self.
If you could see me,
you'd twist your lovers
to hang me on thick branches
of the ancient sky-tearing oaks.
I walk along lone rivers,
nameless paths,
far away from your chilling rooms,
unsinging your accursed songs.
He sat in the shades
of soldiering poplars,
his dried-blood feet tapped
mellow tune to haggard hearts.
His handkerchief, full of poppies,
soaked and torn, was unforgivably
lost from his tattered pockets.
He was waiting
for the crow-versioned days...
(the never-becoming days)
In blasphemed night
I saw him run
in unsteady strides
with blizzard bones
in hardened hands as batons
to be passed to diaphanous brides,
jingling with silvery
smiles, tenterhook-idle.
Their feathery hair
scented by devotion
of thirsting stars
was wildly waving
behind them
with the earthy notes
of unfathomable sonatas...
(forsaken)
Then the ghostly rustle
of thieving fingers,
seeking the rusted cup
for the nascent moon
of their thunderbolted lust.
Now he had gone,
son of our wicked wish world,
laid cold by the ragged shores,
drifting into the rained
bedrooms of throbbing seas.
We follow his soft footprints,
fall into the puzzle,
watch jackals cry
murder.
How many
corpses hang
from deadlock skies?
Sun,
the Cyclopean
eyewitness,
lambent, vermilion
rises,
unseen
illuminations mark
hushed crosses.
And
how many
crosses pierce
the dried,
cracked soil
and embrace
the void?
We're curled up
in the backseat
of motorways.
Our eyes,
they speak,
not our mouth,
nor pens.
Memories
are ungiving
of release.
Replay.
And they talk,
and talk
as if it was
another
Greek tragedy
staged for dinner
acrobatics
of wine-tongued
connoisseurs
and us, the bright
long feathers.
On broad avenues
we can only play-act
the exile parts,
even though
our nostrils
are filled
with
stench of death,
never mind
how much incense
is burnt every night.
And in the garden
the wind bellows,
turns our silence
inside and out.
Petra Whiteley immigrated to UK in 1993 from the Czech Republic. She writes poetry and articles on poetic movements, poets and musicians and gathers data and puts them through the left wing machine for several journals. Ettrick Forest Press published her first poetry collection The Nomad's Trail in September 2008. She devours books in true bookworm fashion, which has prompted her to attempt writing a dystopic novel of her own, currently a work in progress. She is also working with surrealist visual artist Steve Viner on a children's book.