Take Five

Your eyes - prepotent, hypnotic,
Now haunt the glittering matrix
And secret shadows of Babylon.
Into whose other eyes do they now pour
Their dark contamination?

The streets below lie tense, intoxicated
With your recent passage.
Your scent ever lingers here and there -
In cafes, bars, pubs, clubs, dives, taverns, discos, cinemas, theatres...
But whose arm now enfolds your bouncing stride?
Whose hand clasps yours?

Under whose caresses does your freckled back
Now press down the green English fields of our former dreams
In a cold rain beneath a golden dawn?
Whose bare feet do yours that once I licked and kissed now bracket,
My delicious demoness?

Your heart is the rhythm and fire of the cities' heart
And your breath - the narcotic breath of night.
Your walk, your movement, your delirious, electric dance,
The pulse and beat of blood behind stone and glass
And your raunchy laugh and taste of tongue...
My own soul's poison...
Your cool, whiplash body
Whose pale landscape I traversed
So briefly, exploring and cherishing in wonder,
Now engulfs a million faceless passions
And nameless desires,
Infects a million alien destinies with longing,
And pierces me
With the razor pain of memory.

I carry this crimson, harrowing fire within me
Knowing, as I search for you
From star to burning star
And from bar to seedy bar
That I bear the bitter fruits of my own passion -

For, while I ever love Heaven and the things of Heaven -
I can't help falling in love
With Hell...