Never just a simile,
preferring to be like Emily
Not a paradoxile bore
intoxicating metaphor.
To suffocate with batted breath
taunting life, enticing death,
Wandering in and out of rooms,
reveling in the shuttered gloom,
trailing white-night laughing blooms
floating round in ribboned laces.
Flickering flames of waxy wicking,
creeping into creviced corners
under grimly gabled dormers,
into time's forgotten ticking.
Therein chortled humor lies,
grins above from dust hewn beams,
creating dreams from rancid rain,
a lonely teardrop down the pane.
No movement, gesture, token
can memory make from words unspoken,
or skipping through transparent lies
before the midnight madness dies.