Friday, July 14, 2017

Dare


She had one tale to tell.
She once had worn pastel
to Hell (she took the bargain
weekend Dante tour, her guide

a half-moronic Druid) and had
dire reason now to rue it: she
discovered Hell transmogrifies
pastel into varieties of ghastly

body fluid hues, which seep down
through whatever fabric of a shirt
or skirt or pantaloons and socks
you had put on, eternally to stain it

and your skin, effectively tattoo you
in and out of time with it: that is to say,
forever and a day. She was
the kind of nervous little thing

that almost thinks, is only
ever almost there, as wary
as a parakeet with eczema,
wrapped tight inside her folded wings,

red eyes that hide behind their blinks –
and in some locked vault part of her
intent on, bent on pleading to whatever
bureaucratic corporation managed hell’s

defeats and its procedures, not to mention
tainted her pastels and painted her
with their afflictions so she’d ever-after
play the role of laboratory accident –

“o please, whoe’er ye be,
relent for just a beat
and just once let me dare,
I only want to dare.”



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