The Jailor

I
Tonight I have met the Jailor,
Who flips his hair like his bronze keys,
Jingling to signal the early morning
Which spits into the oil blue seas;
On his finger he wears a loose ring.
His cell is made of condom-thin sticks
Bought cheap at the local gas station.
The sidewalk is an elegant vacation
For the Jailor who I sought out
To get my human fix.

Bronze keys rattle and talk
In the violet shadow of a former man,
Who escaped from The Rock,
And with no conscience ran.
But now squashed under
The boot of someone former,
The Jailor coughs up aqua blood,
Which runs down cool and sly
Through the vein of the June sky.
Only now do I notice his tongue
Rolled in berry-thorns and mud.
Only now could I Know
That he was once an egg, in utero…

Did I notice the storybooks on the wall?
Did I notice the giggling far out in the hall?
I am tempted to say a prayer
(Using the Jailor’s Book, of course)
That would keep propped up the tired
Children of yesterday’s embrace,
And would scissor the tongues
Of the cold-blooded and desired.
But my strong hand is weak,
And my weak covers my pale face.
I shall let love take its course.

II
From what cloud was born my only friend?
The Heavens separate the ill from the well,
And as unfit as this homely hostel
Is deemed for the fit, I have made room
On the bamboo floor (though I am still).
On the dime-watch of the murky moon,
You from the farthest cloud did descend.
The Heavens separate the loved from the lost.
I think we are not yet
For the angels to accost.

And if it weren’t for these oil spills
Of unfit passion deemed too large to contain,
Then maybe we could choose.
If it weren’t for the vile midnight waves,
Pushing up against my chalky door,
Reviving my linen cadavers bruised,
I would recite aloud
All the expired names.
I would be allowed
To pour sand onto the games.
I would soon disavow
All the storybooks I noticed before.

The Jailor, then, would watch us go
Sashaying down docks at dusk,
A mere suicide’s jump from The Rock!
(In case he wishes to know.)
Yes, and wouldn’t he revel
At the sight of us locked on the hill;
Would his nerves then be as solid
As the compass lodged between his bars?
His brow would thin dry as his azure lips.
And wouldn’t he revel!
At passing his own moral bill,
Which he wrote with the blood from my scars:
Kiss, Don’t Tell.

III
There’s a linen-wrapped lady missing
From this storybook tale worth ignoring.
Some nights, I still taste the mourning.
I ask now, as her most beloved knave,
If she could close her eyes to forgiveness:
It’s not that I am afraid of the bolts
That spark from her human crave,
But I seem to have choked on her ring.
Most of all, I am tired beyond sorry,
And sick beyond all of “Weather Permitting”.
It was she that had the gall
To make the untimely call
That turned my affection ocher.
So that is why she is missing:
The Departed lies in an oil tanker.
Not a kiss at all.

IV
Here we are then,
I thank you for the call.
Let us sashay down the midnight dock,
While the Jailor stands alone on The Rock,
Watching us make friends with the tides
And pity the reflective fish who once flew
But now only sputter, and float.
We would hold hands in the moonlight,
And after licking the sugar off our shells,
Steal onto a languid, ebony boat.
And then the rain would begin to fall.
I’d give you my painted coat—
Tell of the monster I met tonight.
Tell of the horror of it all.

That would be the only dream worthwhile.
Even if it would serve to twist my cause,
I accept my flaws – under the June Moon,
We’ve talked.
But the border is fixed, I know I am locked.
They say when a rabbit is caught in the jaws
It bleeds until it sleeps—
Well, I can’t believe.
I have never seen the dead so close to the stars.
In truth, I am sickly shocked.
I have never seen the dead locked behind bars.
I wish I had strength to stand alone a while.
Then I would give the dream reprieve
And make this nightmare worth the while.

V
The Jailor now lies with his brooding look.
His eyes, fixed on an un-budging gate,
Beg for his freedom on a stage,
Sorry for inducing such a violet rage.
Maybe the next one will listen.
For now it’s too late—
Someone took
The keys that unlock the cage
Where someone former
Steadily
Wraps him
In linen.