More Poetry by Robert R. Woods

May 19, 2013

   As promised on the Daily Write  here is the revised version of Beyond the Pale.

 



Beyond the Pale

I am troubled by malicious minions shouting whispers in my ears.

Come cast your scented spell against their tortured taunts and jeers.
I’ll watch them scurry out the bedroom door and disappear
as your bare feet stomp there little bodies into jelly.
And while you’re at it, toss a glance of steel blue gall
upon the ghostly shadows dancing in the hall.
They chant and rant in Scottish gibberish about            
poor Willie’s blood-stained sonnets. Throw them out,
chuck them in the closet, strike them with your knout.

Then come to bed beyond these pale-skin dreams,

stop and bend, I love to watch you readjust your seams.
We are castaways, propelled into a mystery
from birth and left to roam unconsciously
without the luxury of moomie’s five-star womb.
Let’s hop upon her martyr’s tomb, hum that rustic tune
whistled by the drunken sailors drowning in the moon.

We’ll take our time, wet suckle kiss each other, linger longer
there than all those withered memories we mother,
those crippled thoughts that scar our pockmarked temples.

I've had my fill of preachy preachers preaching godly sermons,
idolatry, debauchery, the prophylactic rhetoric of demons.
I would rather go a sniffing ‘bout your bramble regions,
questing for a reason deeper, wider, wilder, shorter
than the blond  hair I grip in knotted fists. Our final gasp a roar,
all that we are, all that we were, left dying on the floor.
—rrw  o3-o2-o7 (major rewrites o5-18-13)