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Prelude to Death
Derek Talbott

Drunk with melancholy 
and the smoke of oblivion, 
I sit against the bed 
to watch your face emerge in the mirror 
broken, tainted, 
sick of you. 

The shades that still pervade this room 
have still not dared to break the silence, 
your silence, 
cold and stubborn, 
like the silver knife stabbing through my liver,
relinquishing blood that is not blood 

into a pond of black and putrid bile 
struck by the light beams of a rocking lamp
pretending to map the words 

of a dreamt and half remembered poem 
I whispered to your ear 
while caressing your cheek 
one of those times when life seemed 
so curled and cuddled under silk, 
so moaning and yawning, yet still 
so painless, so endless 
like everytime your lips 
would kiss and cure my gaping wounds, 
which now my nails attempt to soothe 
to sound the emptiness within 
and turn the flesh inside out 
against the cruelty of your visage 
that holiday, 
in that river, 
floating, 
naked, flaccid, pallid, 
mute.

I am left to wander and wonder 
among cabs, clocks, croissants and coffees, awaiting to find a place 
where I can’t find you, 
bereft, 
free... 

The night lady usurped the wasteland yesterday
and promised to bury you for a pair of coins
with a little rouge, some mascara 

and cloying lipstick smeared against my neck.
I believed in her, I did, 

until she stripped and took off her mask and she was you, 
and oh what could I do? 
beat her to death? Perhaps… 
but I told her to sit, offered her some tea,
asked how old, what friends had she,
she said sixteen and none, except for one who’d gone mad after her husband died,
but how? 

he drowned the fourth of July, 
after binging and plunging into a river
lured by some magic fish.


We gazed astray 
and took the last sip, 
the tea already cold and nasty 
like the rain that poured down 
against the ghosted glass pane 
while we asked ourselves why?

So faint, so fragile 
she poured more tea, 
and in my cup I saw those swirling rings closing round my eyes, 
blurring your face and mine 
as you were screaming my name 
filtered by the gurgles flooding my ears,
urging me to let go of these dreams dissolved beneath the psychedelic stars,
away from the bloody flags, 

the hot dogs, the honks of cars, 
and only now you see me take the last sip,
​and yield to kiss my frozen lips 

and suck the spirit out of me.
Derek is a poet and painter at Pomona aspiring to become a screenwriter.

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