the slow art of breathing bitter

Red Lilac Dreams

The red lilacs dazzle under the bright moonlight;

Her garden's iced in maroon grasses and red petals.

I could hear the cacophony of rotten words

from the oceanic rush of dark shades under her eyes.

The neon lights burn with my growling demons;

Chaotic blue in the cobbled streets in midsummer air.

I feel them; cold bare skin and trickled friction

in the after-sunset golden.

I close my eyes and drown in the ocean of lilac clouds.

Clove-scented dreams of blue and chaos.

Sleepy towns spin in the stories of long-gone fairies and demons.

But it's beautiful, right?

Until a slender lady with sunken eyes and bleeding lips

comes out from the earth-flames spreading

to her grey limbs and crushed cheekbones.

Her chapped lips lash my bleak back.

I'm low, too low to stand tall.

She's under the curve of summer, and I

under her spell - blood stains my white dress.

Red and blue flames engulf the raging hell where my demons rest.

The world seems like dying in the inertia of poison.

I could die here in this quiet room;

My dreams shatter like porcelain cups-everyone's mourning for me.

Haphazard voices overflow my dark depths;

She giggles like there's no tomorrow for me.

The skins of wooden men and matchstick women

dissolve into each other and lie like dead fishes.

But beneath my dreams, beneath the roaring flames, and dead blacks,

rule the blindfolded and shackled corpses of poets and painters.

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A/N: A quick vote for a strawberry lemonade? Thanks!

(inspired by a poem without any title by Srijato Bandopadhyay)