Where Dead Dogs Lie (Poem)

I fill the fissure in my lips where my index finger fits,

where deities blessed me with the virtue of silence.

I determine to sneak away from off the bedframe of your body,

the pillow of your stomach,

the bolster of your thighs,

to try your pulse,

its beat,

a rhythm we both give,

one to the other,

treasures we cultivate,

even as magpies would attempt to steal our shiny for their own nests.

And they call it suspect.

And she calls it false.

She thought she was playful,

like the boring would,

as she tried to recruit you,

and rename you,

a Henry Miller,

because she likes to play at pretending to be the manic pixie poetess.

I warned you to be measured,

yet like a bull in heat,

you pushed through the wooden planks,

to your own slaughterhouse,

and ate her lies.

Then cried at me,

awash with poison.

As the mother who cannibalizes,

she saw herself as victim,

and never as Judas,

so common of her ilk,

that battle weary brigade,

that always betrays.

And so to tame this queen of rats,

we moved away from her parade of carnies

that she would always send out to dance before you.

But she saw herself walking on tables at a feast of her own making,

and would have you in her trap.

For she saw herself a bride,

like a sanctified holy day,

but was really not much more than a glass house

tragically bedraggled by a hackneyed heart

that can only ever love like persecution,

like a stoning.

And she claims the river,

dark holy water, will save her,

as she tries to call the slithering magic,

out from the swamp,

those dark spells she never learned to pronounce,

because her blood is red,

not black,

and she looks more like a Pretty Polly drowned,

than the Witch Queen of New Orleans.

And you thought you would throw your feather boa in the road,

like a secondhand scene from some noir film,

and a Gemini would kneel at your feet,

because you dipped a young boy in blood,

and cruelly held him hostage,

in a bathroom,

with a razor blade.

And I don't care how many tables you walk across, woman,

so subtle in your seduction,

like a leather couch porno,

all your little tragedies and tears,

that stream,

like rivulets of mascara,

down fallow cheeks,

so pallid and drawn,

because the nose knows, doesn't it darling,

where the dead dogs lie.

And you thought yourself wiser,

clever,

more flame than muscle.

You thought yourself an emancipation from bondage,

a bird let lose from gilded cage.

Yet you were merely golden calf,

a gilded lie you molded and formed of your own flesh.

And so inflamed by delusion,

you would have made of love a convict,

twisted with penitence and guilt,

even as you saw the prospect of happiness

for your victim in selfless release.

And so after all your lies,

we have wandered the desert,

he and I,

and tripped all your traps,

and watched you disappear,

as you once so pompously demanded it of me.

And now, Canaan is open,

as the wound,

the gash,

that you ripped,

by our love's salve alone,

is closed.

bvk, 2018.