Visibly Loud Emotion Recollected in Hostility

Your thoughts (on seeing me) expand so proud

Inside your skull that I can nearly see

Their force despite the bone encasement, loud

Enough for irises to file.  Your spree

Of ploys about me now revealed include

A purple velvet dress you bought and wore

To bend me to your curves.  A little shrewd,

This ploy zapped round my ribs and caused a bore.

This echo sound recalled years later makes

The eyes that saw it swell again and pain

My present with that now past bed of snakes

That you and purple made — that long-gone stain.

  It is as if a dusk forgotten hymn

    Brought twinge of torture at a hangman’s whim.

~ Phillip Whidden