PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

At the Ten Bells, just on the stroke of twelve,

when Thursday night became Friday morning,

the barmaid tossed a handful of paper

roses into the smouldering fire in the

stove.  They looked like gouts of splattered, dried blood

until the aroused flames devoured them all.

The barmaid wondered how one could live in

the presence of a dormant volcano.

She was, as best she could, reading her way

through Bulwer-Lytton's Last Days Of Pompeii.

A corpse-like man, whose face resembled a skull,

entered The Ten Bells quickly and bowed, and bowed.

His clothes were rather shabby, perhaps befouled.

(The barmaid said, "Most people do not stink

"more than some monkeys of which you might think.")

He crossed the floor---his odor, perhaps, death.

Behind his moving, we all held our breath.

He stepped close to the only "fallen" girl

drinking at that late hour.  He bowed and bowed.

She was, for the most part, a beautiful pearl

on this ash heap of scorched human trash---us.

She stared at him for a moment, then scowled,

and shook her blonde locks at the words he spoke,

sullied and vulgar, sounding like a croak.

She waved him away, and he cursed aloud;

then walked do the door, and bowed and bowed.

Then he went out.  The darkness was like a shroud.

Fifteen minutes passed; then chimes' half hour report.

The beautiful lady slipped scuffed boots back on

her stockinged feet , and said "Time to be gone,

"to find the longest walk to Miller Court,"

and laughed as she paid her tab.  Taking her in,

and wringing from her all the pleasures of sin,

was (almost nightly) the substance of my dreams.

The corpse-like man did not have much of a life,

existing between two shudders like suspense.

They tell me he was fond of one long, sharp knife---

stolen, and sold to that fool for tuppence.

Starward

[jlc]