Style And Rhythm: Haunted

My love, you are one of countless others sheltered firmly from the sun.

But why are you, from measureless yonder

Pining madly for my love?

When I stretch out to feel the splattering rain,

It’s your cold, lonely hand that I take.

Your graveyard smell pervades my loneliness

Spreading a balm of death across my back.

You have built a house in my mirror;

A permanent nest for your lovesick face.

And the sad echoes of your baritone voice,

Congeal my laughter around the root of my throat.

“Why do you cry behind bolted doors?

And spill your tears on heartless floors?

Why do you drum on silent roofs,

In the dark and forbidden dead of night?”

“Yours is a molten magma of violent passion,

Thrust from a volcano in the bottom of hell;

To set my carnal temple on erotic fire,

When no living hand can light my pier.”

“Then tarry, for I shall return,

To your warm embrace now cold from longing.

Prepare for me a gilded bed,

Where man and woman make an Angel.”

Poem written by Dr. Paul O. Anozie