mervin

Wave


Darling, I am growing older.

I have grown hungry, and lean,
the wolf in the lamb's fold.
Where were you last night when I suffered
the assault of that mass of tender young bodies?
Where were you when I needed you.

I am dancing all the flesh off my bones.

Dancing to music that gives me waking nightmares:
giant electric penises, flaming tribal drums.
The room is battered by strobe light,
in the center of the floor stand I and the sacrificial cheerleader,
as the tormented drumbeat climaxes I sink my teeth into her ...

Oh My God. Oh My God.

Haven't I earned the right to a Volvo, an excess of body fat,
high cholesterol; the right to sneer at adolescent excess.

When I open my closet I am nearly drowned by the wave of black,
on black, on black.
What sane thirty year old man, who does not march close order drill,
needs two pair of combat boots?

Pray for me.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of my physical and emotional maturity ...

No longer can I sleep at night.
When I close my eyes, I am engaged by an army in black,
look how their flesh is pierced and scarred.

The horror, the horror.

And the one who leads them beckons to me,
spikes on the shoulders of her jacket,
her skirt so short it melts away a decade.

My soul cries out in torment, and in yearning.

I am lost, I am lost.
I will follow.
Pray for me.