Free Gathered Dust and Others by W. H. Pugmire Page A

young.  I’ve had my sunlit years of golden youth.  I’m rather glad to be rid of them.  The charm of old age is that one may overact appallingly.  One is free of youthful vanity.”
    “Oscar Wilde would disagree.  What did he once write, that the tragedy of old age is that one is young?”
    He tossed to me a splenetic frown.  “He never lived to see fifty.  I’ve never been in agreement with Mr. Wilde.  I doubt that he believed half the things he so cleverly uttered.  He was performing for an audience that would eventually destroy him, poor sod.  He expired because society turned its back to him.  I prefer honest rebels, which is why I frequent the youthful society at the club where I encountered you.  I see there such honest wildness, an anarchy that I can believe in.”
    “And were you a wild young thing?”
    “I was a rebel, absolutely.  In my day it was a scandal for a woman to wear crimson nail varnish, unless she was a punk.   For a man to do likewise…”  He saw his past in daydream, and then swept the memory away.  “I had to pay a price, naturally.  All wonderful things demand sacrifice.”  Joining me at the window, he studied my face in dying light.  “You are quite lovely, dear boy.  How I adore you young men who dress in black.  It’s my favorite shade, is black.  Looks very good on you, with your wild hair and wounded eyes.  At times I behold such awesome beauty and momentarily mind that I’m so aged.”  He stood back some so as to admire my figure.  “Now, what does it say on your tight shirt?  I can’t quite make it out.”
    “Thanatos.”
    “How grim.  Perhaps it is the name of your favorite band?”
    “It’s my profession.”
    Beautifully, he smiled.  ”Ah!  I thought I recognized you when I saw you gazing at me through that cloud of cigarette smoke.  Well, dear me.  The oldest profession in the world – next to whoredom, of course.  How delightful.  You’ve come at last in answer to mumbled prayer.  God knows how often I’ve called to you, kneeling in this squalid den.  I always knew that you would be shockingly beautiful.”
    I sighed.  “Mortals usually fear and loathe me.  Rarely have I been so adored.  You’ve touched me, and in gratitude I shall bestow upon you my most tender kiss.”
    He gazed beyond me into darkening heaven.  “Will it be a kiss of oblivion?  I couldn’t stand any kind of eternity.  Will you grant me shadow absolute?”
    “Certainly.”
    His eyes twinkled.  “Joyous day!  I am your own.”  He knelt before me, and his lovely eyes shimmered like a pair of happy stars.  I fell to my knees beside him and let my semblance of flesh slip from me.  Rapturously, he gasped.  I brushed his mauve hair with hands of bone.  His liquid eyes were bright with tears.  Oh, those eyes!  Lovelier than the prettiest of stars.  Leaning to me, he kissed my grin.  I caught him as he gasped, and held him close.  I felt the fleeting tremors of his heart.  Raising to me his weary face, he gazed at me with those alchemical eyes.  Yes, I would grant him eternal darkness, but I could not surrender his awesome eyes.  I plucked them from his nodding head and thrust them into gathering twilight.  They sailed beyond the moon, burning with the beauty of his fading soul.  Sighing, I wound myself around him, ushering him into the shadow of my eternal embrace.

These Deities of Rarest Air
    A Prose-Poem Sequence
    I.
    I press my weakened knee upon the ground and cry the call, for I would know your shadow on my brow, blossoming, and sense the arcane things endow my mundane mind with ceremonial task, rich ritual, the pleasures of daemonic design.  I cry for they who come to press mouths upon my eyes, beneath which they sink so as to suck my burning brain from out its dungeon, my smooth skull.  Allow me to let loose this essence of mortality that welds me to this world, this earth; then let me crawl into some cosmic place where weakened