The Heart’s Foible
I welcome you as a host
To an ephemeral abode
Designed for deterioration
A rose's erosion 'for another
Hear my first encounter
Of a long-drawn silent shrill
As Death's hand caressed my face
Pallid then as star lace
As was no happenstance
Nor chance disaster
Which ended my brevity
Only my innate deafness
Holding fervency bereft
The same hand's negligence
Lending a fatal forgetfulness
A muddled dream, no less
Of blessed curses and hints
An amnesic grip of timelessness
Before absconding my breath
Buoyant and weightless I watched
Time intertwine in seams of ether
And felt my heart the foible
Flutter enigmas withered
For my forlorn candor
Profound in hollow truth
How should I breathe?
I asked timorously
Syllables strung taught in throat
To the Keeper of the Quiet
Whom then unbound the knot
And replied in kind:
A soul-siphoning fracture with
an irreverent"Master or Master."
Split panes and cracked eyes
Divined the piteous sight
Of two human hands
Severed yet entwined
By what means?
And timidly the question rings
To her motionless countenance
Shattering shivers of gold
And so payed my fate's pittance
A debt we all withhold
And"Master or Master."
She still told
And why?
Came the final question in intrigue
Tempting her tongue forked of fate
And eyes of Hadean trace
She held me, or I held her,
In something not unlike an embrace
Here I felt the uncanny inkling
Of the Quiet Keeper's air
And saw by her onyx visage
That twofold destiny branded
Upon all flesh damned to share
Her mute violence struck me
An impending punishment's glare
And so"Master or Master."
Was all I dared
Thus slipped my soul thereafter
Returned my heart's dull patter
Back muttering to that same desk
Where dreams first made kinships
And "Master or Master."
Was the first transcription
Bled from the pen's lips