1.

Andiamo! Ho le ali. Andiamo!
Let's go! I have wings. Let’s go!

The chalk is ingrained in the grooves of my skin,
a rainbow of pastel dust muddied to iron ore,
the core of me sludge now.

I have drunk drudgery,
through sluggish osmosis become
a cartoon fool in the lap of God, destitute,
a prostitute who sold his soul
for a mess of nickel and gold,
a pimp who put a twinkle in the eye
of too many virgin madonnas.

My knees are calcified, callous
to this pleading pavement,
these pennies not proper payment
for such prostration.

I have lived through
too many winds, too many wars,
my face a battlefield of random colouration -
the pigment, sour and chapped,
my mouth a tight slit
spitting jagged hesitation.

In the beginning I was love,
a conjurer of images which flowed
from passionate heart to jagged hand,
which filled guttering holes
and stilled the wandering mind.

I was in my element,
I was sublime.

But now, it’s more than can be endured:
the chalks burn me to cold cinders
and I am no longer inured
to the savaging of time.

Andiamo!

2.

In sleeping, in sinking ever downwards,
in the dull drugged search
for forgotten wings, I am enslaved
to a triple headed hydra who I can never know:
a bastard hybrid of Leonardo da Vinci,
Botticelli and Michelangelo.

Andiamo!

His clawed fingers
clutched around this brittle body,
my head ground into the pavement,
skull scraped down to a pigment
of polychromatic fury.
I am the jealous Jehovah
giving birth to a tribe of demons.
I am the Delphic Sybil
stirring entrails in quicksilver fire.

Per amore, andiamo!

Sketched out on these cold slabs,
I am an icon, a corpse -
my nakedness an invition
for genuflection and masturbation.

Here, in my lap, is the Christ child
with lips of lapis lazuli,
a goitred face, sucking all the goodness
from these withering flowers
that once were breasts.

I am a tumbled chalice. I am a kiss.
I am the rust that creeps upon you.
I am cut crystal singing out. I am
rivers running with blood. I am
the apocalpse. I am the flood.

Andiamo!

3.

Such nightmares, such dreams,
to wake from a paralysis
and find you on top of me,
that I am inside you
and not being raped by the pope
and a gang of satanic priests -
I am overwhelmed,
excited, exhausted.

Andiamo!

And yet, nauseated
by the clashing cacophony
of chalk skin against chalk skin,
the smell of copper
ringing from your fingers.

Andiamo!

My head full of sacrelidge
as you bring yourself off,
squeezing tight down upon me
like a hot mountain.

Per amore!

And somewhere inside me
an unfelt eruption
as the alarm clock ejaculates
its facist waking call.

Andiamo!

Our overalls tangled on the floor,
waiting for another day
of uncertain survival.

Andiamo! We must rise up now!
Andiamo! Per amore di amore!

More of Dee Sunshine's poetry at http://www.thunderburst.co.uk