Edinburgh Ecstasies

We know what we are,
But know not what we may be.

— Shakespeare

My gin-burnt tongue, singing sweetly
In stinging ecstasies, floral-drunk botanicals,
Distills sick whisperings lingering
Like posthumous poetry, puissant
Potions of unimagined potency,
Delirium-rich sick I see talking
Top hats taking sips from teacups
Filled with jolly botanist alchemy

In my gin-soaked phantasy,—lush
With visions & violets purpled by
Grave-plucked Iris, tentacled orrisroot,
Moths-bane mugwort, creeping thistle
And the abortifacient leaves
Of bog-myrtle—She appeared: the mistress
Of my undreamt madness, Moray
Aristocrat with breath of winter-sexed Earl Grey

Her skin was tainted by moonlight, night-sick,
Lucent like haunted glass, a corpse-charm
Of witch-silver, pale with incurable
Moon-cancer—but I felt a sick desire,
A voice with a cure, it whispered
To tear off her skin, not in screaming
Pieces with my teeth, but a one-piece peel
Like ripping a wetsuit from her perfect bones

Then a new voice spoke, born in secret
Inner thoughts, a madness of spirits
Voicing its voiceless alchemy,
Enlightening me with sage advice:
To cure her true, you must absorb her,
You must become her, you must be her—
You must wear her freshly-peeled flesh,
You must take her cancer, you must consume her

I followed her into the quiet night,
My head full of voices—gin-crazed—
I touched her skin of night-sickness
By the gated gardens of the Crescent,
Kissed her Paris green lips on Moray Place—
Just outside her posh estate—
She let me in—She let me in

I took a fragrant cup of her Earl Grey—
I breathed in its scented sweet—I swallowed
Its boiling heat—it touched my lips
Like unrequited sleep—it was
Opium to my madness—my voices
Dissolved quietly like ecstasies
Into bubbling silence of new alchemy

I struggled in vain against her
Sleep-tinctured oils of cold-pressed bergamot—
Slow-folded, Sicilian sfumatura—
Liquid citrine, Venetian glass—
Her Morphean charm that lay in wait
Upon her Satan-sexed lips,
Patient for my desire & gin-sick kiss

My sleep-dissolved eyes awakened
Amidst gilt-bronze curiosities,
Objet de vertu, Louis XV
Rocaille & antique Florentine,
Haughty portraiture from the House
Of The Young Chevalier, Bonnie Charlie,
Fire-singed fragments of Alfieri
And unfinished oil-originals
Of the fair-eyed & unrevenged
Daughter of the incestuous-sick Cenci

But in this room of rich opulence
Hid the design of her sick secrets:
Skin-stitched rotting dolls, oddly posed,
Decaying mannequins with dead faces,
Ever-watchful eyes, lidless, wrinkled smiles
From withered lips, rotten teeth yellowed
By sugared decadence & Earl Grey,
Draped in macabre sheets of leathery skin

I then met her cold gaze, unhaunted
As if she were mistress of her own ghosts,
And, somehow, it reflected voices
I once obeyed when influenced
By desires of stinging ecstasies,
By deliriums of gin-sickness,
Whispering madness ever-lingering
Like witchcraft within bubbling alchemies—
Her insouciant eyes unclothed my horror,
And with a voice of well-to-do Devil, she said:

So fervently I mused upon
Your starlight-burns & dark-freckled demasks,
Your shapes of beauty, your sun-cancered flesh—
You, my dear boy, are my perfect fabric
For a handbag, a pair of garden gloves,
Or perhaps a charming new dress.

Eli John’s illustration to Clay Franklin Johnson’s poem “Edinburgh Ecstasies”, available to purchase in hardcover from our Bookstore, in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon, at Barnes & Noble, and select libraries throughout the world.

“Edinburgh Ecstasies” was first published in Vamp Cat Literary Journal in 2020.