Wire Walker
There’s the tightrope for you to walk, wire walker -
defying the gravity of reality and the reality of gravity
you know damn well he won't catch you when you fall
as your sticky grip on the star’s razor edge slips
back away from the back-alley black dunes -
use the street’s angles and curves to your advantage
run! from the rouse of his lure
as the lore is as sordid as it is euphoric -
ruined as you are by the ruse of his rune
fade to disappearance with distance
ride the rift of spindrift; a smoke screen
as if you were never here
but the territorial she-wolf knows…
she dreams of pouring rain pooling on a blurry beach
though she may choose not to open sand-puddled eyes
intuition is not blind and instincts are hackled -
for she’s downwind of dual deception
and her elegant nose is one with the yellow-rose winds
her howls now haunt your hurricane
passion’s kite - once blissfully lost to windy swagger
brash in its stellar flash amidst a hazy starlit pinwheel
has returned a stormy petrel
dark and hovering over self-inflicted wounds feeding on strife -
incised by the rapier side-eye of your conscience
you seek to stem the red flow of guilt washing up in waves
knowing you can’t dye scarlet heartbeats white
there’s the tightrope for you to walk, wire walker;
the bloodline - that which binds
a sinful sister’s envies to the sinless
and divides loaves of lies for the bronze bloodless sinner.
Susan Ashley
October 22, 2020
(June 14, 2020)
*Wire Walker was composed June 14, 2020 and was the prelude to Wander-Lust composed July 18, 2020; posted to Poetry Soup September 23, 2020. There is a not-yet-posted, final companion piece; (A Kept Woman composed August 5, 2020 will be posted on Poetry Soup at a later date). Wire Walker was the initial exploration of this theme*
Copyright © Susan Ashley | Year Posted 2020
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