QUEEN OF DESPAIR.

[dadio]

Depression fits me like a shroud,
Said Delilah; its blackness matches
My eyes and hair. I am the queen
Of despair, the empress of all bad
Language; my moods swing like a
Pendulum of a grandfather clock.
Sleep is my accuser, wakefulness
My Judas with the betraying kiss;
I am the unloved among the much
Too loved. I am childless as a nun;
My womb rings hollow as an empty
Tin; men see me as the other’s laugh,
The one to whisper of odd things,
The one to boast of having fucked
For a daring do; I am the unfitting shoe
Cast aside, the moaner of miseries.
My mother treated me as a ventriloquist’s
Dummy, her words echoed from my lips,
Her thoughts vibrated in my brain; she
Kept her men on a string, the uncles
That visited at night, the sharer of beds,
The knights of penetration between
Her thighs. I hear voices in the wind,
I see angels in the trees; my depression
Gathers like a big black cloud; dark thoughts
Pitter patter in my skull, my feelings are
As sensitive as a taut wire, my nerves vibrate
Like a violin’s strings, the sounds echo in
My dreams. I am the sitter in darkness,
The one who stares from windows at night;
The moon and stars are my sisters, moving
Grey clouds, my brothers of brooding, my boys
Of the blackness. My father was a hollow reed,
He moved in my mother’s shadow, he danced
To her tune like a two bit dancer, echoed her
Words like a hollow chamber; his heart was
Torn between two ways, two shallow loves;
He understood nothing of the ways of women;
He saw only the things they wanted him to see,
But he was the only light in the tunnel for me.
I see the moon like a ghostly ship; the stars
Are as loose change spilt on black cloth; the soft
Music in the winds touches my heart, but the black
Brooder me within tears me and my soul apart.