taste the crimson stain

Caustic phrases seething in a cauldron full of bile,

Sephia toned photographs affixed to blood red tile,

A raging beast constrained, pushing up against the stile,

Unfulfilling catastrophic well secured manila file.

Raindrops pulsing on the windows like a fluttering heart beat

Shadows dancing, sly and prancing, acting fancy in the street,

Sickly fuselage of craft whom you may well be loath to meet

Demons flitting, words not fitting, stepping, stepping swift and fleet

Will you be called in that number, will you be the chosen one?

Will you be the cloud that calls so loud, that blocks away the sun?

Shall we gather at the foot of this, your mountain hideaway?

Will you be the orb that burns the clouds and brings again the day?

There the people stand in petty rags and tinker with their toys,

Churning blackness rolls among them, inoculated to the noise.

There you walk and catch their eye, they look with bitter longing, sweet.

Make them seek you, meek beseech you, groping there at your dark feet.

Stepping past with cold abandon, striding heavy on their souls,

Eyes seek the one you look for, one the beacons have for-told

Looking on with heavy malice searching for the face so bold,

Of the lover promised to you when the earth was not yet old.

And in the deepest night you see him, striding heavy, eyes aglow,

Parallel the tracks that flank him, nonchalant, his footsteps slow.

Fate of steam and steel and coal with blinding heat and choking smoke

The Engineer smiles wide and leers and does no whistle blow.

In a set from hell’s theatre, scene is played in motion slow,

Mighty horsemen cloaked in steam do not for one man cease to roll,

And the lover that you sought has gone to places you can’t go,

Now the blackest pitch consumes the darkest corners of your soul

No word, no cry, no grief escapes the eyes there in the rain.

With deadly purpose, concentration, like music being played…

While the engineer who leers on sings a filthy, sick refrain

You dip a sultry finger in and taste the crimson stain.

Fingertip to lips you close your deep fathomless eyes,

And in the taste conceive the little piece of you that also dies.

And stepping in and finding steel rail crypt to call your home,

 Another leer from engineer and crimson of your own.