Queen Jane

It’s just you and me, Queen Jane

Trapped like flies in a rosewood morning.

Lemon light slides down the wall;

Almost made it to that corner now

But it’s the shadow of moving leaves

Makes you think there’s still a pulse.

He’s still dead, just like last time you looked.

So what you going to do now?

Pick yourself up and aim for some long blank road

That links up here with there?

Call 911, tell them about an accident

In a voice too strange to trace?

Well it won’t work. There’s needles on the floor

Sparking as the morning spreads

Fractured crystals with bloody tips

Snagged in the Persian rug. And did you know

Your perfume dances with the smell of ashes?

That snifter on the mantel

Holds all your midnight prints.

You and he filled up the evening

Like those movies he brought home

Late on bleak wintry nights.

He'd been alone too long you know,

Still hungry after all those years

For soft hands in satin sheets

And lazy dances round this room

To music old before your time.

Then here you come like a moonlit dream,

Red lips and too much skin and frosted lace.

You slipped right into his heart

Filled up his empty spaces with your smile.

I saw it coming but I never let him know.

He owned me as well as you

And faith has always got its price. So

Don’t waste those tears on me. Your wings

Are dusted white and stained a little

But your arms make me think of cream and apricots

And your hair will feel like honey on my skin.

Let’s talk.

You know what you came for

And I know where he kept it all.

Behind the scenes:

My first published work was in poetry, and I've always been interested in songs that tell stories, as well as the punchy brevity of flash fiction. "Queen Jane" combines all these things, along with some inspiration from a news story I read years ago in Los Angeles, about a wealthy music producer found mysteriously dead in his Brentwood home.