It was all about a grim,
Foggy, smoggy, old Thursday night
In Hithergreen,
London’s belching south,
Below Europe’s icy, dark trees and
In the silence of grieving mornings . . .
Bulbous clouds bleeding with strained oomph
Would stir the ingravescence of patented ills.
The trains always come railing!
Railing loud and silly
Like heathen bandits with no shame.
But before such mornings,
A half-distilled liquored, low-brewed
Evening caused me tears
When I chopped onions.
A spruced up harlot was coming to dinner
By the way!
Oh, yes, from London’s bleached Soho,
Venue for awesome sex.
I may have forgotten to tell you, brother,
But through the insistence on cutting further deep,
There it stood!
Ilse Koch!
An old character!
She piled up arms against ashen flesh,
Fomenting tears to rain down on the faces of many.
And with each stare,
I asked for permission to be laconic
Just to preserve the dews
Of the heated stove near the chimney of an
Age-battered window of a grey, frazzled winter night.
She made beauty a birthright, my Ilse.
Her rosy cheeks, rouge unneeded,
shadowed her dark eyes.
I was impressed by her,
depraved by her,
all at once humiliated for her.
A hunger lingered inside me,
craving her name.
Still my salvation was denied by time
and the fleeting hours turned me mad.
Her finitude, my hellfire.
My temptation.
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