All about You

Instantly my tiger slips out of me. Straight into the stalking hour, thru’ grimy streets he steps.

Burning, but quiet

Beside me, his tail swishing from side to side.

(Ok, don’t get me wrong - he’s not a pet. Anything but.)

His feral gaze unblinking, remote, scanning these slimy streets lined with houses. And now, he's spotted

You.

You should be scared.

For these houses, their faces closed and cold, blank windows, broken panes;

You understand, don't you (of course you do, you're not a fool!), there’s no one home?

The empty halls will swallow up your screams.

Your phone is out of range here.

He knows. He can smell it.

Your fear. And he is glad.

He’s a carnivore. He’s mine, and so are you.

(He’s actually a black panther. But

I like to think of him as a tiger.)

On velvet paws he follows as you slink into a doorway.

A black door - a back door.

What a strange door !

And it’s falling apart at the hinges.

(Do I know this door?

Is this the déjà vu I’m looking for?)

That broken neon sign above. Still shedding a sickly glow

on the grinning face

Carved out in red and red and red.

You melt into the sinuous blackness beyond and I glide in,

Ready as always, to spring on my prey, be it swifter than a fallow deer.

A pair of eyes. Your eyes

Blue, incandescent. Like marsh gas.

And that smile.

Floating around those fangs I couldn’t forget in a million years.

Of course! There you are, at last!

Waiting for me, as you’ve done before time began.

Waiting forever, for our time to begin.

For whatever else we might be, we’re not strangers in the night.

So.

How would you like your green-eyed panther done in the morning, my leopardess?

Don’t you slip out

Of the back door,

The black door,

That weird door!

Will you leave me in the morning, my spotted leopardess? Again?

Will you devour my flaming heart again and leave me in the wilderness?

Drowning in ecstatic, fathomless pain?

Speaking of pain, did you ever happen to find his corpse, or what was left of it,

at the very spot where we first met?

In this room, behind this selfsame door ?

(Seems like another life.)

God, did that feel good!

It was exhilarating

to feel the crimson haze of his screams obliterate the stars for a while.

Then, as the good Duke of Ferrara (Alfonso, my old friend) would put it,

All screams stopped at once.

In my defence, it was your fault, by and large.

It was my - what’s the phrase I’m looking for - “grand passion” - that’s it-

My grand passion for you that drove me to it, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat,

For you.

And also because I liked - Oh, no, you don’t - don’t you dare to bare your claws yet -

No pheromones in those steely points, my dear.

Or in those sharp canines either, for that matter.

Trust me in this - beauty is overrated; much more than you would like to think.

Your jewelled claws and fangs

Are best wrapped in chiffon, my love!

Oh, how you long to sink them in my carotids, don’t you !

And gladly would I open them up for you, my darling;

But first, one question, if you please.

And I suggest you be honest. (Ugh, the subjunctive!

Your bane, and my only other weakness.)

Tell me, did you ever feel the gnawing desire that ate into my heart,

Did you hear the sound of my wrenching gut,

Every time I saw you with him?

Every time you looked at him the way you never looked at me?

Can I believe that you could,

For an infinitesimal quantum of recorded time,

Feel for me as you felt for him?

If it be so, then life’s worth living again,

This whole dungy earth be damned!

No, I didn’t think so.

It will always be him.

I admire your candour;

And that makes us even, I suppose.

Well, now, perhaps we’ll wait for each other, in the dark,

Forever.

Nothing ever changes.

You; me; our covariant doom,particles bound in spooky action

light years deep in space;

Behind that door on broken hinges, nothing changes.

Or, does it, my leopardess ?

In the end, we are all fodder for the meat grinder.

Except that meat and grinder change places often.