Beneath A Crooked Sky 

by Noah Rymer

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I crept off in the moonlight,

grieving and alone

to find my late mistress;

She who made me feel at home.

 

The crescent in the sky cuts like a scythe

all poor souls reaching for heaven above.

Down the damned went,

forsaken, without love.

 

I cursed as I clawed the clay that formed me,

this putrid, acrid dirt.

Soaked in suicide’s diabolical grin,

a taste so bitter it hurt.

 

The metal gate rattled itself fierce,

rust spattered like ancient blood.

A fine, low moan through the willows,

the coming of Death’s dove.

 

Hands were scabbing fierce,

for this land demanded sacrifice.

My head was stabbing sharp,

a heart carved of black ice.

 

Her headstone lay crooked,

the cadaver’s point of view;

like the shotgun she tasted metallic,

the bride’s head lay askew.

 

Yet when love’s labor lost never returns,

and ghosts haunt only in fairy tales,

madness can run like surging poison 

in your veins, 

and it's to your own cross you’ve been nailed.

 

Thus my spade sliced the cruel burial ground,

carving like an implement of de Sade;

I skewered slightly the coffin cold,

and tore off the shroud of sod.

 

The cross insignia branding the box,

I pried open the coffin as a child 

with a Christmas present.

I viewed my lady past, lying;

I had come too far to resent. 

 

Lying in her wedding gown,

like a paper doll thin.

Her face smothered in makeup plaster,

yet chipped like a China doll, rot of sin.

 

I stepped down into her shallow grave,

grubs inching over her face.

I brushed my lady’s cold skin;

Here she stood in burial lace.

 

We swooned to the tempo

of midnight’s suave din.

The crickets chirping, like singers usurping,

the other in a sweet churchyard hymn.

 

Oh, how we waltzed a mournful ballad,

moon full of pale yellow light.

The dirge of a skull’s sonnet such,

her coldness to the touch felt just right.

 

And as the cape of stars began to slide,

as the bask of the crescent ceased to stay,

I felt that our time had gone too soon,

and soon she needed to lay.

 

With tears like the rich cascade of the Euphrates,

I beheld my decaying darling.

Impressed the lips of the living onto the dead,

forever of my own story, reminiscent, 

I will be marveling.