Exoskeleton Blues

A thick-wrapped night, where fog,
like weeds, had sprung
and choked Decatur Street,
but for a few stray eateries;
spitballs of dotted light.

A figure, running
like The Man was licking
at its neck, a teary ribbon
down its cheek a-dripping
pooling at the throat.

Wet, rib-shaking sobs blew lungs
already straining from the run,
my heart a rabid, raving felon
hammering his bars.

His prints still smeared across my wrist,
his voice an earworm drilling fast
into my brain, I dove into the mist:
a veil of doors.

A girl, a boy, I could not care,
had it been Jesus standing there
arm interlinked with that bold whore
who'd sworn himself to me.

A thousand thoughts rose in my blood:
a convent, poison, all too good
and none would help, just armour, hard
all over, 'gainst such treachery.

The cry came high: a choirboy scream.
My heels scraped gravel as the moan
grew stronger. Cloaked in Chartreuse, swarming
solid mists advanced.

The Feu-Fo-Lay, my mother said,
when I was younger, in my bed,
will get you. Cover up your head!
His light is drawing near!

And always I would be asleep
in minutes, so it seemed. Beneath
the sheets, however, like a leaf,
I shook in knots of fear.

The phosperous washed over me.
All I could think was "finally
the Feu-Fo-Lay has come. He sees
that I was never sleeping."

Within the cloud, as in an egg,
a body, fragile as a rag
was silhouetted, black as slag.
I froze, as did my weeping.

Its finger pointed at my face,
a voice ill-fitting with the waif
began to pipe and resonate,
with coroner's calm, my name.

"A wish," it said, "thrown idly
into my path. You wished to be
encased in armour, utterly.
A testudo to harm."

My tongue an anvil, I stared wild
into the face that every child
has dreaded. Now amused, it smiled
and breathed, not quite a kiss,

onto my lips. Taste salt and gin.
Unpicked, spine to heel, my old skin
curled on the ground, a blood-warm cushion
for my faint. NOT THIS.

Spikes, not metal. Something sharper.
Felt like
scales. Some
skintight armour.

Fading light.
Green. Getting darker.

No! Come back!
Then black.