A poem about the loss of innocence...

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~I painted the Roses red~

My fane. My altar. My rose-writhen arbour,
Where the spun-glass globes of moons once slumbered, orbiting bloodless in the mythic dusk,
Like snow-white's ashen fingertips - slender, snaking stalks of fairy-tale.
The spires of cobwebs dripped icily, here, secure in their silent grandeur,
Immaculate.

Once upon a time,
I was...
Rose-scented.
A child's face set in palatial, frost-blemished marble,
Where a silken skeleton-cloud of dreams on bended knee once lingered,
The dewdrop window of my frozen gothick asylum,
The ice-bitten jewel in my ornate crown of thorns,
Sanctified.

But now,
I've died a death,
A death, all infused with raw scarlet blood-flush.
The pulsing, hot-red heart of my topiary garden,
~where such carefully clipped emotions once slept~
Now, a mess of formless waves weltering in a vivid emerald waste,
Verdant plumes spurting, flooding, gushing,
(Volcanic)
Engulfing the prostrate carcass of a child's tender mind.

There are no King's horses, there are no King's men,
To piece these pale dreams back together again.

Now I'm falling, falling down,
Or soaring up into the sky - I cannot tell.
In all ways, I've become...
Transient, like a child's handprints on the sand.
A bloody black rose,
Rootless and deadheaded, in a windswept world.

I saw,
Your heavy liquid eyes,
(Hot, dusky honey in the dream-bedraggled night)
Sinewy arms outstretched, as though
Crucified.
In years of yore,
When those meandering Church services meant something...
Quaffing sticky sweet wine,
(Flame, flame red in a cold electric sky)
I was so entirely yours.

From one fine-spun astral plane to another,
My fleet-footed essence now flutters,
A hopscotch spirit, surreal and shapeless,
But alive.
Although once I wilted, lying cold and captive in your burnished hand.
Your china-doll, your marionette, your fairy-tale Princess.
You were so exquisitely cruel.
And oh, you're beautiful when you're sorry...
But you know, I'll never return.
You broke my heart, you broke the spell,
And Sleeping Beauty chooses, now, never to wake.

Blood on the snow, blood on the Thames,
Blood in my eyes as I fall...

I painted the roses red.