There Will Be No Tango

Forced along by bleeding eyes
in parasitic host disguise
he offers answers to my questions, and nothing do they mean.
Giving up becomes unrest,
he’s crushing eggs in sparrows’ nests,
offering baby’s breath bouquets that had been soaked in gasoline.

I said no thanks, and lost a meal.
His courtship offered no appeal.
I swore I’d never let him feel the silk sheets of my bed.
Sweet as honey dripped his face,
a sickly rotting scent and taste.
I will never tango with the ambassador of the dead.

I am unwounded, and he has no gun.
Why am I feeling my body digest?
He’s planting seeds in the bullet holes he’s made in my chest.
How did I get to this place I detest?

But he sang:
”Don’t be afraid if you’re drifting apart,
not of the cruel ways that fate twists and turns.
If you’re falling down from an Angel Dust high
down to the crackle of bridges you’ve burned,
you don’t have to struggle, you don’t have to hide.
You’ll still be beautiful to me.”

I dug until I couldn’t breathe,
he filled the hole and buried me;
said he wanted me to feel the way that love eradicates.
He swore on broken lives and limbs
that one day I would marry him,
concede that he had won this game of devil’s advocate.

Hands decaying, wreathed in flies,
there are no lights behind his eyes.
I dreamt while underground that I could understand his angles.
I’ll don no wedding ring of fire.
His bloody eyes fuel no desire.
Lacking any other choice, I still refuse to tango.

Do you hear the sirens? Do you hear the freight train?.
How can I be petrified, but brave enough to still be smiling?
Crack, the limbs of trees fall down, slap, the shore is violent.
Boom, the air’s electrified, but the center, it is silent.

Then he sang:
”Don’t be afraid if you’re blowing away,
if you’re poisoned by pills while you’re drunk.
If you’re going to crash from a heroine OD
down to the depths with the ships that you’ve sunk,
you don’t have to fight, you just have to believe
You’ll always be beautiful to me.”

He took my hand, and so we danced,
spinning in a grim romance.
My hand is in his rotten grip, but that’s as far as we go.
Honour is intention’s myth. I’ll dance, but never tango.