Struggling against the mundane and masks we wear,
the pure and eloquent alike fail the art of forgetting,
declining hiding the recluse, altered in appearance
waxed colored complexion pillowed on a cushion.
Do not refer me the hermit searching for the truth,
seeing a fan of feathers a peacock in conversation,
eloquent to dance strutting in a circle around me,
the fairy-faced slave so pure and stately to stare.
Where am I lonely spying within a lie so confused,
hiding my identity at night, I cannot see over there
my death of a dream a constant companion in life,
the darkness within searching there for my broom.
Sweeping away the images I painted on her easel;
my wife with a love affair lying with a man both bare,
my razor piercing them to death, alone in my mind
the new sketch of a lovely face, willing to marry me.
Or can a man with a troubled soul hide his feelings,
trying to look upon his new painting without a name?
One last day her ghost is late again, seeing her fate
the lonely room with the moon shining pale on a page.
The painter’s stroke for a harlot dark across her face,
hiding the apparition, appearing in this budding rose;
but as in life the jealous poison Ivy pretends to sleep
waiting for a moment, smothering the careless rose.
Little do we know my unfaithful wife a demon tonight,
grandfather time marches along counting time to die.
Tick tock, won’t stop. Tick tock, never to rise again,
buried in the garden, strangled by the Ivy that grows.
“There’s strangeness in this tale confusing my woes -
I’m the psychiatrist with a needle piercing him asleep,
hypnotizing his lies, from spying eyes in their garden
seeing his wife waving to me, black roses in her hand.”
