As The Cold Silence Shifts Poem by Colin Breck Boardman

As the cold silence shifts
Upon the icy waves
Of her indifference,
A change of heart,
Palpable as the northern winds
From slipping polar ice-caps,
Crashes against these softened cliffs,
Relentlessly.

And so the dreaded
Metamorphosis
Becomes me,
Once again,
As the angry gods above
Relay their ruthless price
And thus cast me back,
Revealing my forsaken form.

My furrowed brow hardens,
Into a constant frowning ridge
To hood my guilty stare;
And then these soft loving lips,
Which only wanted to share their happiness,
Curve keratin into a sharpened point,
Pointless,
As no longer now to meld her kisses.

My arms, shrinking into themselves,
And my fingers,
Which once stroked
Her inner fires,
Sinking up to the hilt,
Quite unable to trust another's touch,
Or feel the closeness of her heartfelt hug,
Quiver.

The waxy scales of the cold-blooded reptile
Slowly spread down to my soles,
As my toenails stretch black,
Forward and back,
Into a hateful grip of claws,
To clutch at straws.

And those living darts from Cupid's bow
Which from high Olympus showered down,
And once reached heavenward as hedgehog spikes
From my inflamed unhealed wounds,
So full of new-found joy,
And the source of new beginnings,
Now lie flattened, slowly dying,
Withering one by one,
Into a hollow hanging coat
Of ashen feathers;

Leaving me
A heavy dull-grey blue,
Reverting to the sunless sky,
Betraying to the wind and sea,
My hopeless loss.

CBB Aug 2011

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