Riches Don't Dance on the Silver Wings of Promise

The midnight dance of the white butterfly

a golden lilac has never known before,

dwarfed in inferiority by the human condition

like a sour grape in the vineyard of life.

Alone the queen sits, never having lived or

raised her flag on the ramparts of others

to flutter
willy-nilly
at the discretion of the wandering wind.

Her finger becomes a cobble-stoned street of goose flesh,

a sugary refuge to the battered butterfly and

they both feel the retribution of an
ugly past.

Buried in a disinterested flower garden is

the withered shell of a memory untouched,
the shade of the sun hotter than it's been in years,

a feeling shared in the nonexistent hearts

of both the white butterfly and the grey queen.

Lightly, she thought, she'd win the war

though not so feather-light as to match the crystal scales of her tiny guest.

The broken parts of their oddly skeletal lives

floated up to meet them in the silver hour of the night,

a golden petal like an eagle in a crowded forest,

it cried neither sweetness
nor sorrow

but drifted as if a lazy thing and disappeared into the black.

The queen fell asleep in a mountain of silk dreams,

conquered treasures of a little girl.

The white butterfly alighted,

its knuckled nest a fist of quivering chaos below it,

and determined
its shimmering wings echoed in search of other thronely pleasure.

4.18.05