Ballerina

In a little music box,
The bones of the ballerina are cracking.
So harmless, her hair of spider webs
Is no longer silk so much as dust.

From the eyes that remain in her skull
She is weeping, she cannot speak
With the stained dress fallen at her feet.
The oval glass is cracked and she sees
No reflection of the beauty that was.

But ah! The music is beautiful—
So gentle; a lullaby for the wilted,
The forbidden and the insane.
Her tears compliment the strain.

Skeleton arms upraised to the melody—
Her flesh of scars falling in rags all about her;
Flakes of snow, crimson adorned and,
So delicately soft in the terrain of porcelain eiderdown.

Never once does she beg for The End.
Oh no! She is content in the agony,
Suffering sweet as the music—
What visions of far horizons in rain—
Paradise of Decay—with here and there a flower bed
To give pause to the Airs of Death.

My ballerina. Doth thou hear me weep as well?
Now swells my slumber; and the dark—
A precious void wherein, only thy song holds sway.
I ask you to dance—your form so like the waters
Of islands swept away by storms aeons hence.
Eidolon so lovely—may I join thee
And know the jewels of shores unborn?
Innocence in the face of my scars,
Now that I bleed
Aim thy twists and turns to the sky.

© 2018 Marten Hoyle