Song to Silence

Centre-stage in a tableau of flames
crackling around your charred ankles,
you raise arms like Orans to dawn’s
bleeding sky
as rattlesnakes unfurl in the undergrowth.

Machine-whir tickering taps a beat
along to your prayers
but there’s no response from Earth or above.
You call on the visions
(that torture you more

Than the fire you wear for footwear)
to repeat.
Nothing comes but the dread-stone
of felicity’s drying fruit,
rocking in rising wind.

Scarlet sky dripping forms a portrait
of her O-gape, hair tousled
ecstasy, yet you are
noticeably unseen, unheard as
your song succumbs, engulfed, to silence.