Although I can tell a hand
(or a hawk) from a handsaw, I still panic
about insanity muttered
like a whisper, or soft patter,
like murmurs, falling into soft decay.
Inside the footlocker of the heart is red
with the lubricious lie of love. Red
painted nails on a well manicured hand
reaches out from skin with a slow decay
frosted over it's surface in veins. Don't panic,
it is only age, making its soft patter
over our bodies. The rain muttered
its sadness against the window. The glass muttered
its fragility like an eggshell. The sky turns red
as the clouds seem to release a patter
of droplets I try to catch in my hand.
When the day opens up, I panic
at the fear of its decay.
Yet it is all fiction, this day, this second, already decaying
and the universe could be no more than a muttered
phrase, a mantra to save us, to stop panic.
I close my eyes, see the red
against the lids, close my hands
and let the gentle patter
envelope me, this rain, this sweet patter
of rhythms as old as time, decayed
and starving like a lubricious lover, with hands
that reach for everything. The answer is muttered
into the void and all turns red
as I try to calm this panic.
The rain comes harder, a frenzied panic
of water overflowing the calm patter,
like a soft gentle pink turned to crimson red.
The Earth becomes decayed
with mud. The dirt mutters
its pain under the deluge, like hammering hands.
As the sky lets down its crown with liquid hands,
I let the panic settle into a soft patter, a muttered beat.
My decayed heart marries the earth, a frog in my chest,
a red moon descended.
