desert

So simply you cut them down, taking
what little we had to offer,
taking the wandering alleys flowing towards
unknown destinations into your
grasp, washing them down
with a simple, soft, quiet sprinkle of nectars
we never tasted as younger boys, giving us forgotten
men a flavour of delirium, begging,
pleading with us, pleasing us so subtly,
while asking us for little and a little
more than we ever knew we could give.

So sudden and hopeful your requests,
our unlearned minds couldn't hope
to resist the charm of your ruby-red
fingertips

(familiar as they were
from unending nights
when we muttered thrashing about
wondering, waking to wander and step
onto the one path that would always,
eventually, find us another; yet so strange:
those caresses from your worldly hands
left us ashook, our minds astray, those
senses, still seeming to resist the world)

blossoming.

Never could we hope to enslave you as we had
all others we encountered, while quietly
stepping aside so as to deflect
blame that we would nonetheless meet
on uncobbled paths the city had lain out
for us. We were special;
and you knew.

We never expected you,
you see,
walking so idly amongst us,
in utter rags like ours.
Then you raged (and bloomed),
then you called out to us,
and hummed a ditty somehow
known, which we failed to resist.

We never thought,
you see, that you could
swoop
so silently upon lost boys,
that these little fortifications that we troubled with
could so easily give in
to subtle requests that you presented
so silently to our naked minds.

Our humanity we forgot, taking pleasure
in the animal games we
played and taught
each other – the world
looking
on would shudder then shrug,
not once did it break past
the fortifications we unknowingly built till
you, of course you,
stepped in.

The little touches
of our dying skins, minuscule turns of our brimming
heads: dying:
breaking up the complex harmony
our little universe had invented such
aeons ago, slowly withering, saying
goodbye to each other, missing quietly the traces
of sweat that lingered
past bedtime, far beyond the hours
that our mothers had thought
us gone.

So simply you cut them down then,
so easily nudging our prayers down the chasms
of unending doubt far worse than
the doubts the prophets warned would
befall those of us who lingered still,
and forever,
within the chasms of haunting odours
of each other, the touch of our dying
skins, the long-forgotten touches of our skins,
those wondering mornings, and unending askances
of everlasting wandering within
the desert that has but one path,
one cobblestoned path we treaded ever
so slowly that long ago.