You’re going to have to swear – not to tell a soul…
A confession – a thousand black crows.
Blacker than the gloomy pools of tar which define your gaze,
Contracting, expanding,
Flocking wildly as they are all released
From the confines of that locked prison cell, your soul.
But only to spread their wings a little wider, creep a little higher, into the sky, so that they can’t be reached
Flapping loose, greasy feathers, so unlike the smooth soaring of a songbird, whose clean, angelic wings could recreate the heavenly messenger dove.
No. Instead their dark, piecy coats drip with disease,
A disease that controls. Takes over the mind. The body. Every morsel or morality… Consciousness…
They descend from the sky, those feathers, those secrets,
They descend from the sky, as lightly as heavy sins can fall.
And they fall like ice cubes, clinking around as I swirl my glass in a cyclical motion, a notion that ensures the need for a refill, to keep me feeling full, and satisfied, in a high.
They fall like droplets, almost like rain, each soothing the pain, the kind that makes you yearn for the burn, so heavenly in the chest, a poison that prohibits rest, filling the body with warmth so assuring…
But only the temporary kind…
They fall like weak knees after the triumph of the longest day of your life… the kind that drones on and on, as if time were a thief, the kind that drones on like no one else could understand. The kind that can only be cured by the tipsy kiss of a matter so delicate,
Of a matter so destructive.
But I’ll never be able to admit the mistakes that destroy
Not only me, but the ones who stable my balance.
Mistakes like the tingling sips, numbing not only my lips, but the perception of my connection with everything that is real.
And destroying, like that solitary moment of indescribable burning fury in the core of your spirit, that causes the confusion of glittering glass, the sound of shattering composure, a seduction so bitter and so sweet, a seduction that leaks down your throat and conforms to your existence. Then taking control, possession of a once sober body, a once pure heart, a once uncontaminated mind.
They’re the buzzing through my brain, the radiating frequencies off the walls that flirt with my conscience, the dust in the cellar, coating a friend who only wishes to ease my tensions, they’re under my bed, they’re in the cupboard, they’re beneath the dashboard of my dysfunctional vehicle.
They’re hiding…. But we don’t want to hide anymore! Each is squirming to be released, and all in sporadic disunion they whisper of guilty pleasures, teasing to please me, taunting me with empty glasses, clinking ice cubes, frosty kisses and sensual sensations.
They’re toasting.
To me.
They’ll do anything for their own exposure.
And yet the fermented taste of my words lingers not only in my upside down world.
My reddened gaze gives away intoxicated tendencies. My new infatuation for the glossy touch of glass against my lips consumes every particle of space in my now roaming, subconscious mind.
And as I topple down crooked stairs, I am only reminded of the looping patterns of my life.
For every day is a new day…
And yet, every day is another day.
And when morning arrives, I’m not going to recall all of the crows I have given away…
So you’re going to have to swear – not to tell a soul.
