Layers

I was your vessel
Your hands reaching… into… me… your fingers squeezing
I oozed between them, soft, pale, earthen clay
From dirt where the bones have no sorrow
Your therapy
A divine intervention
I soothed your calloused places. Your hands… fingers… mind…
Spirit…
That lived in Desolation Alley, back behind Torment Avenue, between Despair Street and 13th
Turning left on Despair, the trees whispered here, their gnarled arms scratching…
At your clothing, your arms and face, tangling in your wild hair
But with no vacancy in the rooms in your wretched mind, tranquility couldn’t check in –
Sanctuary denied… run down, cluttered, damaged, rusted, burned to the ground, ashen, smoky ruins raining…
Nuclear winter in the summer
And so you conjured… scooped me from the fleshy earth and blessed me with river water
Pressing me into form, you created curves from my lines, pounding with lions fists on days of frustration
Your rage hammering my soul, while the crows watched through the dirty alley windows
Squawking eerie metaphors for life, destruction, and death that ricocheted against the glass –
The raucous debate like ghosts in metal armor, with their fragments of truth in weapon form
Spitting at the wispy panes, launching a storm of tiny cracks
That let the chatter seep, to climb the crumbling plastered walls, and spread like a spider web, sticky sweet –
A bandage waiting for your dire shadow
Should it free its churning, anguished assemblage from your acidic bones, as you sat hunched over the table
Kneading, coiling, mashing – molding your doing into my being –
My eyes into chasms to hold your pain
My mouth into promiscuous to sear your body
My mind into carnage to suffer your desolation
My spirit into submission to embrace your havoc
Manifestations of the dark side of the moon; Angels in limbo and demons in torment
Oh how time does erode…
You scrape at my layers and they curl as they fall away. Soft and cool, pliable, musky, of the earth…
And I become
A silent amulet that speaks every language
Soft and sweet, low and murky, loud and ferocious, calm and pure. Melodic passion, soul sex…
A salve to soothe a lost, devastated heart – decimate its terrors with pure, unwavering fidelity
As the moon parts the dark sky, your pain pours through your frenzied fingers
Strong appendages that lovingly push, fold, caress me – my mud carcass soothing under your nails
Time settles in your pores and rests there, waiting for you to dust it away
You assess me with ancient eyes, pupils like amethyst oracles
My earthiness permeates your nostrils, and you slowly inhale the scent of me, eyes closed in communion
You dip me in the river water, smooth my slippery skin with roughened fingertips, pressing gently
Where you desire a sweet spot
A desolate, melancholy contentment threaded in a trace of a smile, and the crows tap at the windows
Weathered beaks biting, arching wings in raptured agreement as I am finalized. My purpose becomes clear.
Your vessel… amulet… earthen conception… structure of sorrows, to still your torturous madness
Your demons and your pain – that breaks even the hardest of hearts and invites the tearless… weep…
An impression… patterns of wretched, haunting, heinous wrongdoings… placed –
Centered in my sweet spot, where my gentle embrace folds them
Within
So that you can finally sleep