Anthology of dreams (drownedinwords) wrote, @ 2005-12-08 02:59:00

Winter

It is that odd hour
When the game degenerates
Into ridiculous ploys
Designed to fool and confuse
You have already stained the floor
And so you spill, half-soused
And all refused
Into the doorways
And the footpaths
Of the diamond night.

It is not a long walk
But still you are armed with
The package of double-fried warmth
And the private songs
Which resound in the night
Of a dark skull.

A frozen conversation
Frozen into your mind
Discovered in the evening
Blue and unmeaning
Merely repeating
Frozen onto these paths
Into the frozen rhythms of each step
Until it collapses
And you plead with it
To forget

Lose yourself in your breath for a second.

You could recount your life
In these paths.
These glittered paths
Combined below your feet
Layered there, in the reflections of the ice.

All the glowing blue kebab shops
The restaurants, now closed
Where once you three sat eating
And you tried not to admit what the other two saw.
The doorways where you stopped.
This one to tell her all her beauty
And this
Where once you pissed
And your drunken hand found a loose handle
And so you stumbled,
Ice-withered cock
Limp and unbelieving in a hand
Still wet and steaming
Onto the stage

Staggered unabashed
Between Hamlet and his Queen
Caught their shocked glances
In the amber of your eye

And your staff, unbroken, still frozen to your drowning palm.

It wasn't hard to forgive yourself that.
By the time you collapsed between the sheets
You had moulded it
Polished it into something practically
Transcendent.

That time you walked for an hour
With old reminders ringing in your ear
To bring her your face
And three short hours of gentle screams.

These are the nights you shatter
Beneath your eager heel.

These you tread
As your thoughts fill with hands unplayed
And moves
You are unable to recall.