Lavender Responsibility

Lavender Responsibility

By Stephen L. Harrison

The floorboards groan

with the weight of the mask,

a life performed

as a gruelling task.

They built a temple

on a “Bunbury” grave,

two cowards bound

as the state’s own slave.

To keep the neighbours

from the garden gate,

they forged a covenant

of holy hate;

Taking in lodgers

to quench the fire,

while “Ernest” climbed

on his funeral pyre.

But the womb doesn’t lie,

though the tongue is forked,

and the spirit’s bottle

is never corked.

Out of the silk

and the loveless bed,

a heartbeat rose

from the living dead.

A child was forged

in the heat of the lie,

under a heavy

and weeping sky;

The pride of the parlour,

the secret shame,

a soul born into

a rigged-up game.

Then the trumpets blew

and the seals were torn,

as science laughed

at the crowns of thorns.

The laws of man

broke the chains of old,

and the sun turned black,

and the hearth turned cold.

A crescendo of agony,

a chorus of screams,

as the light incinerated

all their schemes—

For the “sin” they hid

was a hollow shell,

and the truth they feared

was the mouth of Hell.

In Purgatory’s fog,

the spirits wail,

clutching the hem

of a tattered veil:

“Forgive me, Lord,

for the child I sold,

to keep my skin

from the winter cold!”

But Heaven is deaf

to the liars’ plea,

for they turned their young

to an enemy.

They birthed a light,

then they prayed for night,

to hide their filth

from the holy sight.

Let the parents dwell

in the pit they made,

in the jagged dark

of the long-thrown shade.

But pity the fruit

of the poisoned vine—

the children broken

by “the divine.”

For the greatest sin

since the world began

is the mask of God

on a hollow man;

And the child remains,

a ghost of the war,

hammering hard

on a locked-up door.