icicles hung glittering clear,
they shot diamonds, mercury bright
and gleams refracting morning light
they hid the horrid crime that happened
in the cold and dark black night…

how can people do it, say it?
well, last night the deed was done
beneath clouds scuttering wet and rainy
(like my covers wet with tears,)

it will be done again you know,
but only lonely dead will weep
and they are dead…so that leaves just
the children crying in the cold
and hungry violence of the night.

that hand groped blind and deaf, and reached
for icicles hung in the dark,
all light drained dry and swallowed down
fear’s greedy gullet, sucked into
the belly of the raving beast. 

that tongue, fearsome and cleaved in twain
and mute, waggling helplessly
between those fearful gnashing teeth
it fluttered, spit, stuttered and hit
with lies, with bitter accusations
comforting and crooning.

the disembodied hand snapped off
that cold icicle, that one that
the red light of Mars’ distant eye
unblinking, licked, caressed and sharpened,

then the hand floated across
the room so dark and thick with terror,
while some choked disembodied voice
muttered Mene, Mene, Teqel, Upharsin
and I knew I was a wall
and it the hungry writer, and
then it fell in fierce red streaks,
such icy strokes of death tattooing

“unclean!”     “beware!”     “mind-whore!”

my blood was its gory ink
and my heart was its inkwell, screaming
as it wrote again, again,
it wrote again, til I drained dry,
lay still, eyes glassed and blindly staring
at the black sky spinning, fading
from my view while that night faded
into grey dawn streaked with crimson
bursting full into today.

I woke up and found my face
was wet, and thank god it was just
my tears and not my blood, but wait…
my eyes were caked, dry, rimed with salt
and sleep…the clammy wet was really
that icicle and the secret
kill it keeps inside its melty
hungry heart so ravenous
and never satisfied or sated,
just drunk on my blood and terror,
drunk on me, so feared and hated.

i died last night…but in my dreams,
so there is not a corpse remaining
and the murder weapon melted
(they always do in dreams, you know)
and so the killer walks the earth
so smug and lily pure and knowing
that the sprawling feast is now
secure and safe and once again

the killer sings out

“all is well inside the city!”

walls so high, so white, so white,
just like the cliffs of Dover standing,
leaning hard into that night.