Read the writing on the Wall

They tell me
And theirs are admonitions of the drowned
Vanquished by the perilous intervals
The suffocating, murky expanses
Of time
Of strife
Of generational void
Theirs is counsel that dies under the malicious siege of the waves
This ocean of scandal promised
And affections strangled
That chokes me tonight.

I watch him through dead eyes
Across this room that is my purgatory
Yearning for him to stroke the carrion rubble that was my flesh
To relent and glance
Into the pools of tar that were my eyes

I drowned when they asked me to read
The writing on the wall
The spiky scarlet Satan-scrawl of premonitions mine and his
I drowned and was resurrected
A phantasm of these shores
Trodden as if by an elephant
Ravaged as if by a tooth
And knowing yet that I
Am simply the most recent casualty
Of High School love.


-MJ-