Elixirs For Poe

Stopping the Vomit.
Wading in shallow water.
Passing over dark shadows.
Taming the wild, stormy hair.
Putting on the kettle in the brew of cold weather.
Drying out wet soles.
Tramping out into muddy snow.
Easing troubled lifestyles.
Analyzing crimes of socio- etymology.

These are the consequences of love
violence, or peace with concessions.

Versification haunts me. I look into
the tiger's-eyes of death,
pie-eyed against his rival marble tombstone,
celery-hearts and whiskey on my breath,
miracles circling my brain.
I rub over the late evening's design of
deadly potions.
I can't ask for love,
when the bad nights of writing know
not the wings of melodies.
I fix my gaze on too many ancient cures.

How has this shaped my focus?
Am I lost, never to be found,
drowning in the fires of the limitless
brew of page after page?
I will jump from the high cliffs,
in my dreams,
dead on the spot.
No-one can save me. Wake up the mystics,
and they will defy me,
somehow, at point-break.

I imagine ravaged names of tombstones,
a myriad of reflections in the graveyard,
and I am alone, then too, as crickets in
Autumn deep dark.
Talk me into gratefully acknowledging
defeat.
Bury me in sad laments.
It is is useless for an old woman to want
to wear ivy green at fifty-five.
Know me, once, when I was young,
dancing on the blithe visions
of many merry weddings
in fields of corn,
inspire me,
with the notion of greatness,
and then,
I am gone.