Acheron's Sail
His mist has settled, thin
Across the Styx, rows her bloodless into the rustling thickets
Imbedded rich into his paled cloak of Lysol
She awakens
Charon, with his unforboding hood
Bribed his godless toll unto the weeping mossy bank
Her black heart bruised, black hearted
Reciting her heathen prayer
As if like a Kaddish
The pitch has whistled me dark
I scratch the scab
It soon bleeds into an embroidered necessity
That congeals, thickening softly into gentle moon flowers
As her perfected calyx lies still
I am the permafrost, the kamikaze one
The carrion-flower
Immersed into the dark water, myself drowned pure
I gave birth to the beast, the bitch
With its amphibian scales, it’s deathly groan
That writhes in hydra pits, writhing of it’s own accord
We are sixty-times dovetailed into stone
We are both immortal
Yet we eat like worms
Navigating themselves sheepishly from the terrified earth
Sucking rain droplets beneath the reaper’s ever-failing harvest
For once her pulse falls silent
It is merely dormant. She lies inattentive -
As Lucifer treads the soil with incessant black hooves
She creeps along with gentle toes.
Patrick Wright
Manchester, UK
Saturday, September 4, 1999
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