Songs for Exes: #2, N

Written by John A. deSouza

Dear, my dear, my dearest, once so dear to me—

(I’ll song it out as I can sing it now).

A dress cut crassly by too eager sunlight,

red bricks glare around the courtyard’s grime

where some pompous statue cites its claims

against the green stained streaks of time.

Now gone, the life of sunlit dreams to sing,

late night parched cigarettes blown through 

the costumed morning’s cloying toons—some coffee,

and a wound-up poet’s clouded frolic.

But realer words had snaked and coiled—

(blind lovers make more starry fools),

are cornered in a sunny shadowed room.

The play’s tweaked voice drowns morning out,

then crashes, spins its cut in bloody shards.

Broken cups confused of words made tools

to wake fool lovers fleeced.

Old yellowed pelt, a witch’s slash, a pallid

            moonlit drench hung up—

Become all matter for the matter's truth,

(so called), had been all versioned flatteries.

Each future’s pregnant thought of you grew false.

This same dull February light of fallen vertigos,

sharp words that struck: your brother, dead,

(I took your sister’s call). At twenty on your

father’s doorstep, 6 months before

he’d shot himself with an antique flintlock.

(Taken down, from the delayed shelf).

Rage that staged more rage than I could calm in you,

more real a witch’s spittled curses’ sputtered air,

our faces stained, parched, salted tongues.

For long I’d curse back bitterly

(so that you’d haunt my pauses less),

until the blunted sharpness sang

an old light’s bluer tune in me

than any pretty sun-lined dress.

John A. deSouza' lives in Jersey City, NJ. He has appeared twice in David Cope’s 'Big Scream Magazine', been translated in China by Prof. Zhang Ziqing in ‘New World Poetry’, has been published recently in 'The Orchards Poetry Journal', ‘All Existing Literary Review’, 'WayWords Literary Journal' and has an upcoming publication in 'Apricity Press' (June).