Words Leak Into Dreams

                             i.

And when the crack in the wall closed,
a voice in the well echoed out—
caramel fairy looking for
someone’s mouth to melt in, sickly

sweet, ‘Words leak into dreams,’ he said—
the black (and with that, the sorrow)
done in a way of diluting
a song that flies up through falling

snow into an ashen fallout,
heaven disintegrating as
the griever gradually goes
about easing out of forlorn

mourning lets go—jet as exposed
tyrants lording over stone more

                             ii.

powerful than any king’s throne,
cruder than oil transmuted from
martyr’s bone—my mourning veil’s torn
lace was wearable grief (thick-leafed

foliage my face carried, a
warning to posterity) those
closest to me wanted buried,
or else my kiss explicitly

sugar with syrupy tears hosts
the salt of my litany of
miseries emptied (varicosed
when held close) vainly with sticky,

viscous worry—swallowed (swallowed!)
whole throatfuls this meat’s meteor

                             iii.

showered them all in, damask rose
on the inside until its dusk
of pearl choked walls of flesh—colour
cloaked muscle in dolorous heat—

resembling molten ivory,
so, naturally—lachrymose
as a Virgin unwittingly
privy to an angel’s chastely

arrogant Annunciation—
foregoing consent’s unopposed
anticipation, on knees both
well-worn and hell-thrown (untoward

piety as from sin a pope
could hope to be!) I prayed for more…