Dream Catcher (a poem) - [2015]

Dream Catcher

She’ll catch them when they close their eyes,

and, blinking, lead them through the dusk:

those lonely, drifting, lid-eyed folk,

whom consciousness has left to rust.

She takes their hands that, idle-resting,

cling to inkless pens and hope –

draws them with her finger’s curling,

guides them down her turning slope.

Obedient, the dreamers follow,

loping after sound and smell:

the fragrance of her wild perfume,

the clamour of her ankle bell.

She leads them to her pool of shadows,

spilling from a waiting chamber –

lets the pitch devour her prey,

licks her lips and senses danger.

But nothing. Not the stench of burning,

gag of sulphur, choke of coal;

not an inch of crawling flesh

beneath her threadless camisole.

With quarry held in lapping shadows,

she lets warm breath abrade her skin,

steers them to her open portal,

draws them close and pulls them in.

It’s dark. They know and yet unknowing

still they find her yew-carved seat.

There she utters breathless whispers,

daring to be first to speak.

“Eat,” she says, and puts her fingers

to their lips to make them feed:

cold, crisp grapes and bitter olives,

wine and pomegranate seeds.

Clumsily they stand to meet her,

trembling to touch her lips,

leaning close to smell her neck,

to hear her breath, to stroke her hips.

But her angles cut like sharpened stones,

cadaverous – imperial –

with incense buried in her scent,

putrescent and funereal.

She binds her prey with lips like velvet,

tight around their humming throats –

weaving down their chests and shoulders,

tracing lines and rites and rotes.

Then down their arms and round their wrists

her lips go brushing, feather-light,

round and round her jet-black lovers,

shadow-stripped and bound by night.

With spindle fingers on their cheeks,

she guides them on, her dreaming dead –

until they topple down together

to lie upon her master’s bed.

There they’ll sleep in knotted chains,

committed to their tomb of bones:

her body fractured, ossified,

her lips like alabaster stones.

By dawn she knows her prey will leave her,

banished by the blinking sun,

leaving her to sleep alone

in sheets of cold obsidian.    

They’ll see her through half-waking eyes,

and, blinking, glimpse her in the light:

that lonely, drifting, lid-eyed girl,

who catches dreamers in the night.