We jumped from the night and
fell into the moon
upside down
in fractured dreams.
He told me
if I could picture it,
I could live it.
Reality is a broad market.
He came with golden eyes,
silver lips, quilted with satin
like the finest-dressed mannequin.
His puppet fingers
dealt a card; a blow, hard.
I wept with despair.
The Lovers, it read,
the world darkening
around his hair.
What does it mean,
I said.
We made love
through the storm,
wrote about it.
Him, a satire.
Me, a poem.
He lit a fire,
but it burned blue.
I waited for him to say
I love you,
but he dressed himself
in frantic black,
walked out,
never came back.
My desperate skin fell off,
stripping like cracked paint;
a whisper, a cough
and I crumbled.
There was a tinge of pain
in every act of sin,
love, lust and shame,
my burden heavy enough
for the two of us
but conveniently made for only one.
I tinkered with the tarot
deck he left behind
for me. Every night,
I unveiled my destiny.
The Tower.
Outside, thunder.
The hour slipped like sand
in a glass timer,
the moon crying into the sea,
dust drying up the sun.
The animals sing songs for me.
Locked into my metamorphosis,
I wait for the card of the Lovers,
burning for my virginal kiss,
clutching at my covers.
I send letters to the rain,
my heart dissolving like a pill
as the flood sends my words
over the hill
and back to my ears.
There are too many years.
Copyright ©: Shaunna Harper
—————
The End
And that’s the End of the Poem
© Poetry Monster, 2021.
Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of world poetry.
Poetry Monster — the multilingual library of poetic works. Here you’ll find original poems, poetry translations, ancient verses, ballads and even folk tales.
Poetry Monster (or even The Poetry Monster) — is also an international multilingual community of poets and poetry connoisseurs. Join us:
Some external links: The Bat’s Poetry Cave. — Fledermaus’s poetry site. Talking Writing Monster. — the irreverent and irrelevant chatter on subjects both serious and not quite. A free for all board. You can scribble anything on it without registration (but it doesn’t let spammers in). You can even post your poems. Qwant.com. — a search engine from France. It’s an alternative because there are a few alternatives, like Bing, Duckduckgo, and Ecosia. And there is Yandex, the ultimate language-oriented search engine for the Russophone world. Commercial Links: Russian Commerce – the foreign trade assistance agency Other links: Poems and poetry in Russian (if you are reading this in English, as you obviously are, then you’d have to switch the language, the language switch is on the menu. More on languages)
