limp roses
blue boots, vinyl, knee length
hair extensions braided like sun-rings
pleasure knick knacks
perfume bottles
lacey things that hug the bodice
under garments, lipstick smudged
stained dentures
wrappers like scattered seed
brothel trash bin overflowing
young man slinks from the shadows
picks up plum colored leggings
"I knew her.
My family thought me at church.
But there's different ways of worship."
brothel walls, graffiti gloom
seem to whisper
lost shuddering joy
gasping delights
restless yearning
sighs that slip to groans
I see a bedspring mattress 'gainst the wall
charred remains
smoked rawness
air, dust brown heavy
like her legend
powerless voices quiet
when the brothel closed
sheared
unapologetic
in the hellish heat of gold.
Poem composed: February 17, 2021
Long winter nights left me in deep despair,
aroused before the dawn so many times,
in concert with the mantel clock whose chimes
informed and mocked, knowing that I was there.
Consciousness had become too hard to bear,
walls of pain with no lesser ones to climb,
each hour of sleep too short, each one sublime,
my threshold reached, sought refuge in a chair.
The bedspring in the mattress spear-like stood
uncoiled unlike the ranks in which it lay
a twisted Angel sent to do no good
to torture and torment me, and it would
I ordered a new mattress the next day
three months ago missus said that I should.
For contest 'Italian/Petrachan sonnet- Spring', sponsor Craig Cornish
March 14th 2018
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