Sweet Magdaline

At night, when the fleeting dreams haunt my flesh and tear at my walls,

And the waking voices hold vigil on my fantasy, it is then, cloaked in the shroud of gloom that I see where you have gone.

Without regards to the fevered twilight, who bids no clemency to the maddening vision, into that damnation so willing I go.

A gait amid the scentless roses, a look into the blackest sky, and a cup of tea with the beast, bitter with the rotting leaves.

Gone is the smile, parting lips that once revered my flawed words.

Gone are the moments dipped in the cove of your eyes, that once beheld my fallible flesh.

Into that quixotic bog, shaded in the valley where my sleep offers ephemeral glimpses.

You sing to me with such disdain, I hear your wailing on the starry canvass.

Such misery it is to behold, the cries of famined hounds, and more the snapping bones within the maw, once sweet claret nectar has spilled from the ire.

My name parts the winds, and, as if upon winged desperation, rend my pleasant rest apart and drown my lungs with resentment.

Do I drink from this irony? Indulge in this font of putrescence?

From below, comes the bellowed breathing from parched throat agape, lusting for vengeful chalice of a sacrilegious vintner.

Oh what mournful crying!

Tear my weeping eyes from me!

What songbird comes from the depths with such a cadenza? Such pitiful an aria as to drive the flocks from port, and the milk to spoil.

Sweet Magdaline!

Afire is my skin that swells with my contrition, as surely the lakes of perdition rage on feasted bones and souls!

These hands that once traced your beauty, these that snuffed the candle from your eyes!

They break from within as your intonation beckons the darkness come!

The choir now at my bedroom door doth rattle my peace!

And the mighty sword from which I slip, slip deeper into that streaming brook, where folie and fancy bear no resentment, and where from the stony cliffs you sing into my dimming light.

Sweet Magdaline, such delicate features now rot away, agonizing your every note.

Sweet Magdaline, I now sing from the shade as well, where at your feet I plead with the unforgiving.

Despite the naivete of young love

Your tepid body you pledged to me, sweet Magdaline

So your body I took

Despite your callous apathy and misdeed

Your heart you swore to me, sweet Magdaline

So your heart I took...

-Ernesto Mora