The Cave Of the Salamander Legend (An Allegory)  

Off watching
where all the myths
and legends
never truly explain
why I see
everything better
from a distance

Too many people
lost in
so many conversations--
The buzz of those
distant dins
like biting flies,
flying around
my head
only make me angry.
I am no longer really
possessed by the drive
to discover whether
I am wrong or right.

What the fuck
are you truly afraid
of dreamer?
In this dark,
we can hear
the grunts and howls
of Mother Night
calling up the bones
pinched in the throes
of wanderlust.

2.

Driven deeper into
the dark cavern,
where you can either
find your own soul
or lose it
by dropping it over
into the deep
of some another
no man's land
of the old caravan
daughter's heart

The cave of the salamander
leaves you crawling
naked, on you belly--
sentient and sensual numb
into those distant cages,
of the night carnival--
those that come to see you,
as the smoke rises
up around your head,
are not praying for you
but for the flames
that will never
let you sleep for long.

3.

Where you wake up
with your cock in some
dark hair girl's mouth,
never really certain
if she loves or hates you
as to how this life
may end bloody--just
lie back and let
the adrenalin
infect you with a need
for something dangerous

And you just know
that you are fucking broken,
but you really don't know
how, when, or whether
you ever really knew who
you were before it had
happened as the punk-tooth
ached its wile
idle for wickedness
with bile

It's really the pain
that let's you know
that you are still alive

As she spins around
and your eye traces
along the bare soul-runes
of old tattoos and fresh scars
are left like fingerprints
deeper, beneath the flesh
and the decadent limb
sink, burying deep into
the hot, tearing splash truth
of your own cruel nature
of what she abhors,
and why she had come to you
so willingly...

Wanting,
driving her over
and under
as her arms
naturally wind
and bind themselves
behind her back--
Gasping together
in rage, drawn
along the floor
within the pentacle
traced in those
cold instincts
of blood, sweat
and semen
her body left open
aching for
vulnerability,
and a fresh mouthful
of sin, disgust
and loathing
tasting bitter-sweet

until we are both
left, misspent
and whimpering--curled
in against one another,
against who
we have become and
into that which
had first drawn
us together,
unnaturally turn't,
and supernaturally bound
unto our own damnation.

4.

"I do not know
how to make people love me.
I do not really know
how to make them hate me either,
that just seems to happen naturally."

She purrs warmly
into the bicep of arm,
as the slick humors
of the salamander
seep in through the pores
as gravity engineers
the exposure,
into the body
and then into
the blood
stream--into
those cavities
and recesses
of the dead flesh
of scars--and in
toward those
dying organs

"Sometimes, if only
for someone else's touch,
I want them to stay
until they can stand
me no longer. Some day,
I imagine that some one
of my lovers may kill me.
I don't really want that,
but I also don't want
to be alone...
And I haven't
really figured out
which is worse yet...
The lesser of two evils,
I suppose."

Her eyes, like a child,
searching into my face;
a child's heart wondering gaze
trying to discover if
they have been good enough.
I let my gaze fall away,
to the inked image
of the salamander
that spills, and crawls
out from beneath her left breast
onto the flat of her stomach.

5.

I strike a match, and
catch something slithering
away at my feet, before
I light another cigarette--
as if only to realize again,
that I am fading away.
Merely watching on
as these ghosts and shadows
come back to collect me.

It's really the pain
that let's you know
that you are still alive

There, in the old city
thick with neon
the tribal scavenger moths breed
against the burning glass,
eventually fluttering
and then dropping away--
and like some lingering
infestation of manifest destiny,
out into the heathen wilds
we all must be driven out
and away some day,
as everyday, parades
motion and emotions
change character names,
but never change the character
of the old city itself.

I can no longer
hear them-- as I
know that, like Diogenes,
I could spend the night
through,
searching and seeking
out an honest smile;
behind a subconscious desire
to believe that, perhaps,
we were meant to meet each other.

"I do not know
how to make people love me.
I do not really know
how to make them hate me either,
that just seems to happen naturally."

In my youthful days of ego
and lingering childhood
unreasoning to be loved
merely because you are--
I close my eyes
to myself, and only
see what lies beyond me now.

"Sometimes, if only
for someone else's touch,
I want them to stay
until they can stand
me no longer. Some day,
I imagine that some one
of my lovers may kill me.
I don't really want that,
but I also don't want
to be alone...
And I haven't
really figured out
which is worse yet...
The lesser of two evils,
I suppose."

And I turn back, as
my face disappears behind
the smoke, staring toward
the mouth of the cave.
As my clothes fall away,
I hear and feel something
moving within both of us.

Uley