The Strangest Dream

This is the place that I am,
The hotel room I saw –
Three single beds in tandem;
Three beds behind the door –

This groaning, aching room;
This wardrobe open-doored;
Bare hinges grin like ribs
Delivered to the sword.

The reservation made,
I await her I loved once
And her she loves instead
In solid nonchalance.

This is the place that I chose
For our weird ménage à trois:
A thorn with doubled rose;
Le roi mort – vive le roi !

This tight, untethered bag
That I empty on a bed
With a pervert’s vicious shrug
Falls off my wrist like lead.

Inventory accursed
Of the contents here declared
That blew my brain and burst
In flesh tones bruised and bared,

In pastel colours blown
Like smoke – this strange apparel
Laid out like coffin silk,
Twin lines in parallel:

For each a coral scarf,
A shower-cap in pink,
Boots in embossed calf,
Sheer panties edged in mink,

An opal silken robe,
An amethyst bikini,
Topaz stocking tops,
A veil in white martini.

This is the place that I am,
The hotel room I fled
To walk among the stars,
To commune with the dead.

This gaunt apartment block
That empty windows grace
Like blind hands of a clock
Clamps me to its face.

Vertically bent,
I climb by stairs and rails
To the topmost battlement
Where a single seagull wails.

This is the place that I reached.
A causeway lies ahead.
A sea is on both sides.
Dry shod I surely tread.

The breakers to my left
Are higher than my head.
I know they cannot reach me.
Gravity is dead.

The waters to my right
Roll calmly to my feet,
But something lurks inside my soul,
The length of a heartbeat.

Revolving like a Catherine wheel,
I seek whence I have come.
With the causeway flooding to my thighs
I stumble, wet and numb.

I flee the undivided sea.
I desert the windowed walls
Where the clock face tells its usual lies
And the usual silence calls.

This is the place that I am,
The hotel room I fled,
Stripped of my soaking clothes,
Naked in my bed.

Her I loved once is here
And her she loves instead.
I hear them breathe in their naked sleep,
Each naked in her bed.

This is the place that I am.
The days, like dreams, have fled.
The clock outside has stopped.
No one is in their bed.

A strange shelf is over the bed,
Where strange things seem to sleep –
Shapeless things, the colour of mud –
And I sit on my bed and weep –

Unrecognisable, unlikable,
Unkempt, unclean, unsewn,
Unravelling, unsettling –
But, in my soul, quite known.

Her I loved once is on the shelf,
And her she loved stone dead;
And I weep for the touch she will never feel
Of her she loves instead.

I reach for the boneless, cold, dry flesh
And tear off a piece like God
And raise it to my lips like bread
And swallow it like blood.

I do not know how they come to be here
Or by what nightmarish force.
I know as surely as they are ice
I’m burning with remorse.

Mute with macabre tools –
I will not paper the cracks –
I hack and hew these things I knew
And load them in plastic sacks.

Nauseated, mortified,
Terrifyingly naked and scarred,
I cling to a rag of humanity –
And telephone Scotland Yard!

I watch with no remembrance
How with elegant nonchalance
The men in their boiler suits and masks
Reveal no evidence.

There is no case to answer
Or shred or bone of proof;
The falling years like gauze of rain
Have wiped the face of truth.

This is the place that I am,
The hotel room I saw –
Three single beds in tandem;
Three beds behind the door!

The reservation made,
I waited her I loved once
And her she loves instead
In cultured elegance.

This is the place that I am.
I have closed the door and gone.
In the essence of a dream,
It is the perfume lingers on.

I take my true love by the hand
And sketch this diagram,
The bruise of her kiss on my being –
This is the place that I am.