Sleepless In Whereis Part 2

Continued from Part 1 The forgery of Multitudes between the Silhouettes (and discarded cigarettes, neath the haunted parapets) mock my lonely echoed steps – mock my lonely echoed steps – (struck like clicking castanets – struck like clicking castanets –) as I lace unlabeled lanes, erasing silence’ sullen treason. The mossy stones condole with me (within the oubliettes draped in blood and tears and sweat sometimes dry, more often wet quite like drops of anisette sipped in moments one forgets self-reproach and raw regrets) midst the midnight minuets and the purling pirouettes of the fugitive Grisettes (flaunting charms and amulets) who, in flitting shades of arching bridges, linger longer, teasin’. Along the When I’m drifting, but a stardust castaway, weaving, threading by cafés and deserted cabarets, just a gauzy appliqué on the river’s rippled spray, chasing Fools along the way through the strands of yesterday, neath the throbbing peal of sobbing bells in spectral cloisters, quaking. In belfries, high and haughty, alabaster Knights perform, riding stiff against a storm, steeped in cloudlike chloroform, while the raven skies deform and my shrivelled shovelled form (rapt, while bats in steeples swarm close to candles waxing warm) hangs in hallowed hallways, hiding, shoulders weary, weak and aching. Around me hover grinning masks, veiled visages of Queens, feigning fatal final scenes of demented doomed Dauphines (against the scarlet sky they lean, dreary dripping guillotines), traced in opalescent ballrooms only tattered time remembers. The hidden hands of Harlequins (while floating free, unseen disbursing secrets sibylline, amongst the manes of Halloween), tap (on tumbrel tambourines behind abandoned shuttered screens) a dirge (with tattooed tones pristine) for me (a heap in ragged jeans in these crazy cluttered scenes), trapped interred in toppled stone chateaus that dismal dawn dismembers. Rogue breezes pierce, benumbing me, my ears and toes a’ freezin’ (in the Cockcrow’s purple season as when nightmares should be easin’ and the Zephyr winds appeasin’), so I reach for rhyme and reason, which endeavours leave me wheezin’, caught impaled upon the jagged edge of early morning’s breaking. The chill evoking silver chimes of Nodomain start knelling as the searing sun looms swelling, and their monodies hang dwelling in the cloud drifts’ care, revelling, but the Sandman’s too compelling and my weariness impelling – since my eyelids risk rebelling, when they’ll fall, there’s no foretelling for the starry sky’s past telling – as I fade beneath the flaming forge while embers tremble, waking. End