She Who Brings The Ages

And wild as a stream of nails I sit,
ribbed, pinned to a soft chair
arms held on the rests stapled,
crucified to sports channels
like a Messiah to his lantern'd pillar.
The rocks and bones behind me
now dried in mists as if they had not been,
barely do I remember the chapters
those foxglove days when age seemed idle
and old age lay in a distant tomb.
Then in bloom she steps avoiding nooses
at my knotted feet;
the flower youth,
hair cascading over apple smooth shoulders
like silk veils landing on stone,
looking at my grizzled frame with Love
and a still of sadness.
For age allows no beast or kid
to slip its ruddy path,
and time that cruel keeper
will snatch hearts out of gentle clay.

And she will bring the hours,
the disaffected rages,
crystal wings slapping onto granite;
lost echoes leading to diamond shores
where eager electric bolts burrow into wispy thighs.
The crowds and fillet artist
grow as one,
a volcano haired mass nodding and banging
surging toward a sour mob.
When I am dead or dying
she will see the young man not the old
and cling fondly to these withered hands
as I crumble into a shemagh grave...

@Steven Francis poems 2010