Poems From Providence - The Poet's Press

3
Coffined in his sleepless rooms,
he poisons himself with laudanum.
He thinks of the thousand ways he will kill her.
He sees her ravaged on a riverbank,
imprints on her breasts of a legion of rapists.
He sends a gibbering orangutan
to stuff her corpse up the nearest chimney.
He bricks her in with her poetry.
He puts her mother beneath the pendulum
(the more she talks, the faster it falls).
He sets her sister adrift on a raft,
circling the Maelstrom ominously.
A raven persists on her window ledge.
The Red Death sweeps down Benefit Street.
At vision’s height he dresses and walks
the darkened brick alleys of Providence.
He climbs the steep hill to her corner,
spies the darkened windows above.
He will stand here till dawn,
deceived by the rustle of curtain,
the imagined flickerings of candles,
the creak of floorboards and stairs,
the glint of moonlight on brass.
The clean sunrise will banish him,
burning away his ardent love,
his ineffectual revenge,
leaving him an empty vessel again,
drifting from this friendless seaport,
south, to court a darker mistress,
a veiled widow who refuses no one,
and whom no one ever leaves.
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