Up you come, come again, up the leg-ache hill,
kicking cinders,
splintering the teeth out the kissing mouth,
muttering to yourself,
no hairs in the palms of your sweet hands,
caught you looking !
seeming like one of lifes great thinkers,
but your mind is stuck on other things,
your world view,
is a thrashed horse blinkered,
busted lips need gentle sucking,
nothings new,
but the pain will get you bucking,
looking,
and listening,
all senses now on high alert,
fine tuned,
as the prolonged hiss reveals,
the rapier drawn and it's simultaneous penetration,
as unseen and rare,
as the fine-boned beauty of the octoroon,
in another poem set somewhere,
in a lazy New Orleans summer afternoon,
beguiled by silence,
and the subterfuge of the jigging hummingbird,
that hovers,
in a tiny blaze of eye-popping iridescence,
black-draped widows,
emerge from the church on the rocks,
fresh from the stations of the cross,
innured to penance,
intent on hounding out the menace,
the one within,
and the rapier whips and strikes,
and penetrates again,
as light as the breath of a butterfly,
but deadly and deep with the thrust of the pain,
just time to blink,
and quickly consider the name of the game,
then away,
the funeral was fittingly sad,
in the mist and drizzling rain,
even the fir trees looked bowed and drooped,
and about the undertaker,
a definite air of something gone bad,
and the coffin weighed nothing,
took just fingers to lift it,
and it was fingers that took her too,
choking ones,
that squeezed out the pink to the blue,
and the hiss of the rebel rapier,
and the pass of the old for the new,
one of these fine days,
I will give all this stuff the middle finger,
pack it up,
and head for the place I was before,
and hope,
the hummingbird still shimmers.