This is a re-working.re-write of Hiding.
http://www.writingforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=19139
Untouched Heart:
Flesh stretched tight
as if the bones at any time
might burst through
and announce death’s arrival.
Hormones weep, pity
the child with no contact
sitting in a corner
wishing all his Christmas plums
would come home again.
The untouched children
seek out darkened rooms
for the rest of their lives,
pretend love in circles of lies
and sullen hotel rooms,
mark time with needles,
beg love and dimes
in the same sentence.
Smoke rising;
inside the man’s chest
something is burning.
Slowly though; not a warning
more a signal of defeat,
a waving of a stained flag,
a mournful trumpet cry of despair;
in the distance
smouldering canons
filled with words we cannot understand,
a battlefield littered with bodies
and the compost stench of mislaid dreams -
his mother wanders
only this time she smiles
and even, perhaps, kisses.
His hand reaches for the glass
drowning in bourbon,
steady now the hand
where before
it shook like an old dancer
moving forever
to the violin-strained tunes
of accumulated loss;
once firm, once resolute and soft,
his skin lisps,
the nails curl like a dog’s tail
expecting to be kicked.
Yellow-stained eyes stare
into the nicotine space -
into atoms and planets
and spaceship wrecks
after promising landings -
between acts.
He lights a cigarette, sucks,
stares, blows out smoke
and redemptive hope,
sucks, stares, blows out again.
Words drift
much like the smoke,
utterances floating in space,
aimless and lost in the vacuum
that needs a flame to be free,
nothing stirs -
not enough oxygen.
Outside it’s 3pm
inside it’s 3 am;
it blackest night and forlorn dawn
and dead end dusk
rolled into another cigarette,
washed down with another swig -
weird how time
is relative to the heart
and the bourbon
and cigarette.
Distantly
pool balls collide, striped atoms,
hearts in love, flaccid penis
and dry mouthed vagina,
swift kisses
then destruction
or worse;
trapped in the pocket
of empty conversation
awaiting resurrection.
Most stools are empty;
wait hungrily for regulars –
losers and grinners
and all the shades within -
His stool feasts
on an arse resting between
trips to the toilet;
nothing is washed away,
it lingers like the stench
of an open cesspit.
The door opens
and his eyes turn
openly; locust desire,
a savage green hunger,
a lust for fresh news,
and to touch nipples and pearls
and sheets on someone else’s bed.
The blank eyes return to reality -
it’s not her, it never is
not any more, never was.
Inside his head
his mother’s voice admonishes
while his heart, a slamming door,
clenches.
I wasn't totally happy with the first version and I think this is better.
