YOUR FASCIST HEART (for Sooks)

In the darkest shades of stygian blackness you come to me,
A wraith of cool flesh and infinite ebony eyes, cloaked in dreams
And clad in the scent of ancient earth and mysterious oceanic deeps.
I am seated, slumped before a guttering candle,
Wits aflame, senses vibrating to a welling, soundless primal scream
That resonates from deep within the heat of my essential being.
The shimmering outline of your naked form reaches out
to overwhelm my defenses and embrace me, glowing in Silurian lava,
with ghostly arms that end in sinewy, steely talons.
It is the mirrored bottle, finally, that screams out warning,
As your presence fires the chambers of my mind with melting heat:
I am NOT the captive of this disturbing dream, I am the KEEPER!
Lurching to my feet, chair flung back to the stony verge,|
I advance to clutch the phantasm of my most desired fears, as instantly
Across the room the vision cools, becoming bluest crystalline glacial ice.
With desolate finality, an Arctic gale sweeps my chamber,
Chilling the spot where a moment ago the burning gates of hell yawned wide.
The frozen apparition reflected in the bottle vanishes into tumbled mist.
Wearily, with the fatigue of approaching death, I stumble back
From the abyss. The candle flares once and gutters out as I lift my cup

To the wine-dark blood of your icy loins that welcome a conflagration of oblivion.
Somewhere, just before my senses fade into soporific limbo,
I hear the faintest hint of exquisitely muted song….your fearful, alluring
Fascist heart is singing…singing!…sweetly into the muted turmoil of my dreams.

-Riyadh, 1993