The February Featured Poet is Wesley D. Gray

Please feel free to email Wesley at:

wesdgray@gmail.com

LADY OF MIST AND MERLOT

The taste of her makeup swirls on my tongue
like these sanguineous mists of Merlot,
and in such gloom harbors the shadow-crafted notes
of raging cherry and pious plum

that linger in the stale air
like dew on deadened leaves,
and leaves me with the frothy finish of crow’s wings
sharpened into guillotine serrations.

I miss the glossy feathers
of her mascara rainstorms,
caressing me in a sweat-tempered blanket
woven in the iceberg steel of salted wounds.

Oh how we used to dance in the tarot card formations,
waltzing through the zombified temptations of high society,
our cacophonous cabaret always playing out
the ceremonious Death Card.

She would glide her silky fingers along my neck,
work them into (and under) the skin,
her hands like oiled spiders sliding over striations of muscle
and then down beneath my spine.

Her bite was the violence of the symphony,
the poise of her teeth like sharpened licks across the violin strings;
and her tongue, that deep-rooted cello,
hammered a maddening beat that none should like to follow.

THE SWEETEST DEATH

You will know she’s coming
when you hear the telltale sounds
through snowdrift hills, freshly powdered,
glassy hooven echoes tapping
against the panes of frozen lakes,
where drowned lovers lie unbroken,
unbridled, unspoken.

You will realize
she seeks you this night—
outside your dreams, at last—
shattering your window to hover,
gliding and swaying
within the flurries of icy breathe,
and yet you feel the flush and start to sweat.

You will hunger
for the touch of cyan skin
speckled in the kaleidoscope lattice
of crystal flecking,
cold flesh of lusty pain, harboring
the razor frost of every moaning,
mournful Winter's night.

You will be torn
in dissonant torment
as your eyes attempt to drink
her monstrous beauty,
human and demon intertwined in a single body,
she’s everything you have ever desired
and more than you imagined fearing.

You will be beckoned
to know her more closely, staring
into amber almond eyes unblinking,
unflinching, unyielding,
heart-pursed lips puckered in stillness,
hips tapering at rightly forbidden angles,
the impossible curve of thigh-burning seduction into your retina.

You will spiral
inside the trance
as your eyes trace the swale that splits her abdomen,
deepest at the chest, hypnotic shadows
churning between her breasts, shallowing
at the rippled core without a navel, further to the dripping trenches,
where ecstasy and madness both will linger.

You will hear
her voice as she bends before you,
purple-crested breasts gently swaying,
and leans in closely, whispering
in tongues unworldly,
then parts her lips to lay a kiss, concealing
viscid tips of unquenched teeth.

You will feel
the fingers of breathless gasping, tugging
as your skin begins to quiver, prickling
from the touch that slithers along your spine,
her arrowhead tail turning,
curving around your neck, coiling,
coiling, coiling.

You will taste
your blood upon her tongue
while she accepts you swiftly;
she’ll take you quick, and then again,
as you writhe in pain and pleasure’s folly, falling,
falling, falling—softly falling into this,
the sweetest death a man will ever know.

Wesley D. Gray is a writer of things mostly strange. He is an active member of the HWA, an author of fiction, and a poet. His first two books include Come Fly with Death: Poems Inspired by the Artwork of Zdzislaw Beksinski, and the horror novel, Feeding Lazarus (written as Rafe Grayson). Residing in Florida with his wife and two children, most nights you can find him enjoying a wide variety of geeky activities, but most likely tabletop gaming with family and friends.

Discover more at WesDGray.com.