Hollywood Nocturne
“If it weren't for music, I would think that love is mortal.”
― Mark Helprin, A Soldier of the Great War
The winds at sunset ushered in the night as if his sigh conjured them in duet
chilling the air, pulsing old wounds, stirring red leaves, sweeping through
the alleys, whispering dark rumours to the shadows, and flirting with the
Darkness. He closed his eyes to the ghostly caress of the wind. It was his
custom to toast her memory on her birthday aloof at the
pub from the cheery patrons. The upbeat background music like venomed honey.
Yet on impulse he threw the bottle against the graffitied wall outside, shattering it.
And he stood as if he demanded from the shadows as an exiled lord “Hear me tribe of the night!
Your queen has fallen! Rise! Rise!” as if rallying a dark army only to realise that some
battles have to be fought alone. Just one last time then he tells himself. How long had it been
since he donned a balaklava as armoured cars rumbled through the streets? How long since he
raised Molotov cocktails in a fiery toast? The dreams like dormant underground
fire erupted in red and black in the throes of nightmares. His eyes brooded over the rim of his
cup; the spirits untouched.
He stood motionlessly as if his lonely shadow cast by the flickering light of a
failing lamppost was graffitied on the wall. Emblazoned in muddy
grey as the sigil of the night tribe. Just as her name was written as
musical notes on his soul by a sleepless composer.
He envisioned her then a vision of beauty behind dark eyes and smile
set to music and incantation. He all but sleepwalked across the dreamscape
seeing her laughing. Her parting lips like reopened wounds, standing up to
sing and he stood swaying as if in a slow dance with her.
As if restless shadows were granted form and face again
he could feel her raven hair tickling his cheek in the embrace
and her laughter a singer's melodious laugh. Her eyes laughed casting her
dark spell over him. As if a soloist Stradivarius busker took up a song
from the shadows. The dark waltz began.
It’s been years yet like a ghostly queen haunting ruins she is on his mind.
And she beckons him to a duet with her away from the harshness
of neon lights. There are raven wings in her voice and laughter weaving an
illusionist's final spell before the light dims.
Passersby laugh and jeer. It goes too far. Fists clench. Mourning becomes rage.
A blade gleams by the sputtering beams.
One last dance. Just one last time.
No. Forever love.
He could feel the sensation of falling. The pavement is cold. He could
see her then.
“What are you doing on the ground?” she laughs.
Her words and hands lift him up. Her hands are so cold. So why does he feel
Warm? Like spring’s thaw?
Don't look back....at the mangled remains left on the cold street.
The way they left them both. The harsh light of high beams like sacrificial daggers
seeking the heart before tires screeched.
She guides him...her silhouette beckoning like a black gowned flamenco dancer.
He remembered when he first saw her. She came into his world like a revolution of
beauty and like a dream's vision too wild to be snared and held back by a
dreamcatcher's chords. The syren to his Odysseus commanding to be bound to
the mast so he could fall under the spell of the syren's song as the waves sigh at
the wake to an elusive homecoming.
She was not a bright spot but the darkness where flame-singed wings heal.
Not a call to come back to the light but welcome home to the haven of darkness.
His last breath steamed like a blown kiss to the night.
And as if his eyes could transcend the starless city night sky.
He saw her as a vision against the stars he could never see amid the city lights.
The sky wept with the celestial gold of a thousand voyaging stars as if the
Perseids hailed her in the radiance of celestial gold. On the heights where
dreamers and warriors on eve of battle wove stars into constellations
into the radiant silhouettes of love and war and transcending that veil of
darkness.
The streets were quiet. The frantic rush and roar of the empire of illusion had
faded as if the stage was set for them. And in those moments when one
approaches the band to request a song to slow dance to.
She was both oasis and desert to him. The mirage become whole and
he knew the craving of the nomad's thirst for the elusive oasis
shimmering in a grand illusionist’s flourish. The vision haunts his eyes by the
nomad fire aloof when the caravan laughs and sings among themselves.
The moment that one looks up after telling you goodbye and their eyes see
past the light pollution to behold the stars in their myriads as the mariner
voyager sees them. When all other lights are a painted desert
were you that? It does not matter now if she was the one mirage he would have
sleepwalked after across a dreamscape of whispering sand
a song unsung betrayed in the sloe-eyed Sharazadian smile.
Heard the way the composer haunted by a muse hears music in silence
and weaves notes from the silences of the desert’s solitude and thirst.
In the kindred way a warrior on eve of battle looks to the stars weaving
alignments of the distant beacons into radiant visions of goddesses of love
and war and the herds race each other while the nomad breaks ranks to pursue
that vision behind dark eyes.
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