Darkness 99

I paint my face with shadows of darkness. My body of flesh damp with sweat, lays unopened and moist with pleasure. Time lingers on my eyes as shadows come and go, expending themselves across my back.

I lean forward and open my arms to welcome my lover as fire engulfs my body and many hands contest my soul. A bite to my throat and the wolves have me. Tied to a tree trunk as an evil breath fondles my virgin body, handcuffed and naked, I have paid the price, not in shillings or farthings, but in forgiving what I do not understand.

Though the shepherd may tend his flock and whittle away the day by blowing heathen notes on a tounge of willow, I profess to know nothing of his contiqueated ways. Though not an artist, I assume he amuses me all the same by breaking youth and sleeping on the barren hill without shack or running water, muttering into the grass, moistened with sweat and spittle, his dialect being colourful and simple handed, is a tonic to my spirit, ill conceived he may be and his sheep ready for slaughter and no doubt he is laden with manners of a suckling pig, he remains my best friend. At least until I can find a way of doing away with him without conflicting with my conscience and purse strings.

When darkness enters darkness and the life of a sibling is castrated and cut in two, when a man reads he is about to die and the sun sets in front of you and not behind. A herbalist is consulted though you cannot find him and the gaze of your eyes seeks but does not endevour.

That the futility of war is something that man strives for and life is an understanding; a staircase of sadness; a zygote of thought that man encompasses willingly.

I see a man stepping from a doorway, clothing wrinkled and stained. He stands over the gutter, his trousers undone, steam rising from his feet. Three months later he will leave his wife and four year old son. The whore he has laid with last night gently planting her seeds while congratulating itself on a job well done.

I see blackness that engulfs people when they struggle to make a marriage work, and realise too late that there is no going back from separation.