Wine

For dverse. I half-closed my eyes, thought, Gothic, and got this.

Pour me a cup,
rain the sharp-thorned feast on my head,
run, pounding the blood red sand with burning feet;

I will match you draught for draught,
hand for hand.

Trees bend and bow,
breaking,
report echoes, bleeding sap into the slime
where furred things drown open-mouthed,

and the toothed and clawed
drag broken limbs deeper,
where the gold lies cold and rotting-wrapped,
beetled,

in the eyeless end of all things,
all time and the dust of dead worlds—
worms shrink at its touch.

It comes for us;
I hear the hot suction of its breath,
the pawing of moist palms.

Pour me a cup and tangle your arms
with mine, your tongue, and taste the fire
one last time
before the dark.

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