27

The night blossoms as it claims back its fair lady,
O silent companion of mine...
She treads soft-clad, pawing cautiously the unfamiliar stage,
The pallor of the spotlight.

The whip of a bat's wing is her orchestra,
The strangled call of a bird frozen in flight,
Warns her prey to retreat into their hollows,
The moon turns away with grieved countenance.

Her eyes glow like a fire replenishing itself; the eyes of a huntress!
And her coat is as grey as the smoke that smothers,
Her body stops corpse-still,
But her tail so expressive, betrays her...

Yet when morn comes she is no longer betrothed to the darkness,
She stretches drowsily along the windowsill and rumbles contentedly,
Beguiling me with glass-green eyes; not of malice or envy,
But a rare kind of trust, a treasured love.


© Florence Challender 2010

26

When, banished is the day
I fall to Nocturne's cradle of unrest,
a shroud of white noise befalls me.
And your voice, indecipherable, although-
vociferates in my head...and leaves me cold
And your face, the fragility of your smile
half-obscured by memories decaying into fiction.
Oh! I swore I heard this voice before
and beheld this face!
On the wrong side of heaven,
where the cruel-hearted angels are exiled to
with wings of a raven which has frolicked in the snow.
And your eyes like chalcedonies, flashed back at me
drinking in the bitterness I thought only I could see.

© Florence Challender 2010

25

No death bed convert shall I make,
The heretic soul in me would only baulk at the prospect
These eyes have swallowed too much truth and the twinkling of faith has long expired.

No, I shall shirk no shame of my last ill-spent moments
Nor shall I deplore my trespasses,
For my neighbours are as Godless as I.
I shall quell all thoughts foreboding to wander to a place “hereafter”,
Pray, what could it offer?

This life’s a false promise-
A world where rich feasts on poor,
woman treads in the shadow of man,
And love shrivels in the hands of fate.

No, I shall abandon him before he abandons me
I know I am expendable, but He?

I shall butcher my heart and serve it up on the altar-
A mere returning of the favour,
For all the last breaths snatched by his avaricious grasp.
I’ll beg him for his worst, for one of Gabriel’s own to smite me down with a blow that could bring the castles of heaven crashing...

This is my exodus from a world in tatters;
Evil shall no more pluck the ripest fruits of Good’s labour,
As the lamb heart coils up with the dragons.

© Florence Challender 2010

24

Her love is a star so fragile it may burst,
the feverish glow of a lantern in the deepest dungeon,
illuminating my heart, when all else is cursed.
Her light becomes weary and flickers like a butterfly,
I oft fear our love will dwindle into cinders and die.
But still the candle burns brightly,
drips through the night.
Together, we could torch the sky.


© 2010 Florence Challender

23

Night's dark veil falls upon a couple's encounter on a glistening backstreet
the clatter of heels, the chime of laughter, peel off the jacket.
Too young and carefree, too consumed in passion to even blink
as Venus casts her shadow.
Creatures of the night awake!
The creeper,
we bid it farewell but still it returns, the ghastly blighter.
The cloaked one,
unidentifiable, slinks like a practiced predator and has hands that seize.
And the one that waits in slumber,
making neither sound nor movement
only sleeps and waits,
waits...
to drag them to their death bed.

© 2010 Florence Challender

22

Death in its complexity will wage war and rage
and whilst Eros persists, it's Thanatos who prevails
can't silence the skeptic that plagues the mind
life and its longevity stretched before my eyes.

"The casket calls, put this demon to rest!
A heavy-hearted sigh heaved from my chest
the poison that tricks my vision, the cynic that shrieks
all hope remains hidden while desolation creeps.
My mouth is stitched shut to stop stupid words leaking
reduced to nothing but a willow weeping...
too much love carelessly discarded, too many fantasies entertained
I crumble into depravity and my soul is stained."

Death whispers to me in his dulcet tones
of a world underground for those whose life has left their bones,
a place where the restless sleep.
His cold breath on my neck causes a shiver to slither.
I long to reach out in a sombre embrace
his icy hands relieve me of life's lingering trace,
I breathe in his cloth of cobwebs and he closes my eyes,
no longer a spectator to life's horrors and lies,
as he lies me down on his soil-lined bed.

Death in its finery and splendour is all I could ask for
as I crush velvet between my fingertips and examine the well-polished wood.
So much time laid aside to honour my end,
for in this my eternity I shall spend.


© 2010 Florence Challender

21

Tell me, if you will, if I've failed... for caring not enough?
A string of hearts trampled upon
spat words of affection with nauseous disdain,
such feelings surely spawn from weakness?
I sought gratification in flesh, in vein
"swill down the guilt and lament tomorrow"
And how soon tomorrow comes...

I tried to resist like man delays death
but my bark had no bite against your raging light,
how you softened a heart unflinching
and blinded my wandering eye.
But to have so naively thought you felt the same
now it's my heart that's taken to the slaughter
won't you rinse me down of love's bloody shame?
Tell me, if you will, if I've failed... for caring far too much?


© 2010 Florence Challender

Thanks

Hi,
a collective thanks to everyone for the supportive feedback. It's been an incentive to post more seeing as they've been received well!
Florence,
xx