Vacant Chambers And Cigarettes Poem by Norman F. Santos

The Gods have spoken
Of what I am, was, and shall
In a telegram of impious sighs
Marauding an open door
That I had left ajar with my eyes
Always sleuthing in askance
For a serenading knock,
And the castigators
Riding the yuletide wind and cars
Revved a gyrating silence
Of a lamented psyche
That I have naught but
Black lips made of cinder and derision
Engulfed by a daft genocide
And my chest hangs on a scaffold
Whilst the sun sprawled in recumbence
When the clock divulged
The barren quarters
In the teeming alleys,
The unrequited eyes
Amongst the adamantine
Petals of a blossoming asphodel
The empty hands,
Amidst the bountiful grains
Of time and its subterfuges,
The quavering lips
That had never talked to anyone
But fated to kiss the rings
Of the vacant chambers
In these squandering cigarettes
And as I wait for a key
That lingers on the billowing air
Palmed by infinitesimal humming birds
A colossus mauling in the small of my frame
Undraped to be a heartless beating
And until one stepped into the trellis
Close enough to the gaping antechamber
Of my vacant city
I shall shed a salty sea
In the pseudo-heavens mantling above.