The Magpie

O, hammer away at the frozen heart
with picks and shovels and filthy hands
grasping and clawing for sweet redemption
feeling about the chest, for some shiny trinket,
before the magpie takes it away
full mouths gasping for breath, in plain desperation,
like an unquenchable thirst

O, stagger along, through the fire and the dust,
another blue sky
convulsing and wretched, pulling on the tendons
the delicate drapery of insanity, carefully arranged
on the windows of a swollen brain,
like a dagger on the night sky

O, peer at the girls with starving eyes, from inside
the old abbey, never ceasing to desire
frantically resisting, the curvature
of their red satin lips
aged and diminished by the relentless hourglass
the wrinkled monk pounds with clenched fists
and gnawing teeth, at the edges of dawn

O, dance for me one time, shooting stars of the Nile
an performance fit only for the Pharaoh,
at home under the Great Pyramids, golden sands
reaching until the horizon ends, shining like
the ocean at sunset, dreaming of the icy moon
resting in my goblet, and the world in her hands