San Francisco by Night
"There was a way he'd talk to me, sometimes. Back when he used to talk to me. And he
never knew. But I'd waited my whole life for someone to talk to me that way. Magic words.
Maybe they're true. But they don't always mean what you believe they do."
Their words always pleased him. Their pain, his glory. Faces. Faces
woven thick and fine into the lush emblazoned skin of his canvas. Paint entwined about the
apparitions of his lovers like concertina wire -- simple wraiths weeping in the Shadows of
the Shade.
"Desire smells almost subliminally of summer peaches, and casts two shadows: one
black and sharp-edged, the other translucent and forever wavering, like heat haze. Desire
smiles in brief flashes, like sunlight glinting from a knife edge. And there is much else
that is knifelike about Desire. Never a possession, always the possessor, with skin as
pale as smoke, and eyes tawny and sharp as yellow wine. Desire is everything you have ever
wanted. Whoever you are. Whatever you are. Everything."
-Neil Gaiman, "A Season of Mists"
Haight Conroy was an aspiring poet then and, in the smothering
etiquette of the Victorian age and the choking mastery of his wealthy parents, his
abstract vitality was frowned upon. Words swollen with dark honey, turbulent shadow, and
tempestuous desires scorched the finery of his dear Mother's silks and stroke rage in the
spirit of his zealot-Father.
Language drove him mad. Poetry scratched at his consciousness like the
tempter's claws and seared his will to a pool of embers. Though forbidden, he wrote in
secret on parchments that he burned into an empty womb; genius slithered through clean air
in a trail of smoke-haze.
Words and Women. Demigods of his idolatry, symbols of supplication even
in his human cult. His admires became his lovers, and his lovers became his slaves. Harem
of hearts beat only by the beckon of his debonair presence; even in his mortal days, the
razor of his love was an addiction. Pure intoxicant.
All except for Olivia, the Madonna of the Night. Botticelli's
brilliance dissolved in the lovely slopes of her cashmere flesh, in the midnight-woven
silk of her hair, and in a voice as sweet and fine as a rare vintage wine, and in her
perfect diamond-eyes. The jewel won him before the game began, and her addictive blood
became his poetry shortly thereafter. At her simple request, he deserted his aristocratic
family and the delicate Venisian blossoms that would only wilt without his water, to seek
solace in his eternal muse, the prey that collared the Master.
"He dissects her with his words, whips her with obscenities and bruises her with
curses. She begins to cry, softly, deep in her throat; then tears well up and burn her
pale eyes, which she had imagined far beyond tears. The salt-warm drops fall on her
husbands face, and he winces at each drop...each word is like a slap, a blow, a kick, a
burn. And she takes it."
-Neil Gaiman, "The Kindly Ones"
Isiah destroyed her. In his vice and alabaster grip, he crushed
Olivia's bones to dust, and his childe became a shower of soot upon the imported Persian
floor, a bath of dust upon Haight's feet. Isiah told his new son it was a lesson, an
indulgence of pain, refined and demonic torture for the foolish lovers-soul. Life to
death, light to dark, and honey to venom -- Haight's roguish charms turned deadly in the
suede oppression of the night.
"The worlds are breaking in my head
Blown by the brainless wind
That comes from afar
Swollen with dusk and dust
And hysterical rain
The crashing of the waves, the siren's calling greeted Haight as he
stepped onto the porch, hands resting casually in his pockets, liquid-cobalt eyes embedded
deep within the hemline of horizon. It burnt, it all burnt like sunlight. The memory fades
to black and the haunting cries of his Olivia silence themselves in his frost-of-heart;
fresher thoughts blossom like hideous black-blue flowers, the nectar always tacky and
crimson.
The fading cries of the light
Awaken the endless desert
Engrossed in its tropical slumber
Enclosed by the dead grey oceans
Enclasped by the arms of the night
Emily. His prey. His slave. She cheapened it all, she cheapened every
decadent moment of his birth and rebirth, of the tears he inspired, of the hate he
provoked, of the shattered-soul shards he left in the wake of his smooth, roguish smile,
in the wake of his cold, hissed goodbyes. He watched every tower crumble under an offering
of bated breath, he watched every sail sink into the death of his embrace. The master's
canvas had turned like the leaves, had turned into nothing more than an artless shroud at
her hand, at her smile.
The worlds are breaking in my head
Their fragments crumbs of despair
The food of the solitary damned
Who await the gross tumult of turbulent
Days bringing change without end
No change, static was perfection, static was a phantom-laced air to
such a dark angel, to such a blood-hungry demon. His heart was stone, his heart was water,
his heart was his pallette and such a sweet lover the perfect canvas. Devil and the deep
blue see behind me, vanish in the air -- you'll never find me. I will turn your face to
alabaster. Then you'll find your servant is your Master. The tears of the lonely, of the
weak of heart, of the forgotten, of the forsaken stole away his beast. Stole away his
need. Tears like blood to fill a hollowed hunger.
The worlds are breaking in my head
The fuming future sleeps no more
For their seeds are beginning to grow
To creep and to cry midst the
Rocks of the deserts to come
Doubts. As easily forgotten as embers of fire, as easily ignored as the
blaze of stars that pervade the ebon lids of night. Control fled from his hands like cool
water, drizzled through his fingertips like parched sand from toy deserts. He found
himself loving her. How he ached for his Venice, for his villa beside the square, for the
sanctity of the things he has known, for the stability of the stagnant prophets of his
time. But alas, as the water follows the moon, he would endure San Fransisco and the
absence of Abysthe, of his beloved Europe, for her.
Planetary seed
Sown by the grotesque wind
Whose head is so swollen with rumors
Whose hands are so urgent with tumors
Whose feet are so deep in the sand."
--David Gascoyne-Yves Tanguy
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