Goth Girl (Moonflower)

Ah the scary Egypt of her skin!
Black Madonna,
I will light a candle for you.
This twisted romance
Exalts its victims.
The moonflower blooms only at night.

Always the strange one,
The shadows’ favourite,
She knows imagination
To be true revenge.
Only those with pennies on their eyes
Can truly love life.

Black, red and white,
She sees Venus rising
In her silver skull-ring.
At home among headstones
And stone angels,
She wanders,scrying epitaphs.

“Drink wine with the dead,” she says,
“Black wine…”
With black wax she seals
A black-edged letter
And covers the mirrors,
Sets lilies in a vase.

She fingers a spider’s web rosary of skulls,
And sleeps in a coffin of words.
Her hands are full of red ankhs,
Looping questions.
Always the crossroads,
The decisions of art,
Holding on, contemplating, patiently,
Bearing the tension,
To see what emerges
From sperm and ovum.

She loves the taste of wormwood,
And the green fire of death.
She balances
The perforated spoon over the bulbous glass
And, drizzling water over the sugar cube,
Watches the seagreen turn milky.

In her garden
She grows monkshood and digitalis.
Someday, she whispers, I will find the black rose.
And in the meantime
There are black tulips, black sweet William,
Ace of spades.

And now let us dine
On black truffle with white asparagus,
And toast the night in ancient red wine
From a bottle sleeved in cobwebs and dust.