All I Want To Say

Iron-bridge gloom, thicket haze -
That's all I want to say
Streetlamp gloom, wine-alley nights -
That's all I want to see

Bring me a rose from a garden of fungus
Bring me greenbottle eyes of dead love

Pay the bill with drowned deep-sea coins
The barman with yellow brass teeth
Dark rooms of teak where old bad dreams creak
Poison wallpaper will lull you to sleep

Cholera window-lights, long-gone fever nights -
These, a dark honeymoon for me

Laudanum nightmares and a Death's-head moth
A pearl-handled pistol tucked in the sock -
These things were comforts for me

Sunken black blooms, rust-railing gloom -
That's what I yearn to see

Werewolf of longing in lair of loam
Tender, savage, bereft of home
Sobbing October, orange moon
Dust of twinkling, his love all gone

That's what I long to be.