CLARK, Anne

Poem For A Nuclear Romance

What will it matter then

When the sky's not blue, but blazing red

The fact that I simply love you?

When all our dreams lay deformed and dead

We'll be two radioactive dancers

Spinning in different directions

And my love for you will be reduced to powder

The screams will perform louder and louder

Your marble flesh will soon be raw and burning

And kissing will reduce my lips to a pulp

Hideous creatures will return from the underground

And the fact that I love you will die

You don't have to sleep to see nightmares

Just hold me close

Then closer still

And you'll feel the probabilities pulling us apart

Pulling us apart

Our darkness

Through these city nightmares you'd walk with me

And we'd talk of it with idealistic assurance

That it wouldn't tear us apart

We'd keep our heads above the blackened water

But there's no room for ideals

in this mechanical place

And you're gone now

Through a grimy window that I can't keep clean

Through billowing smoke that's swallowed the sun

You're nowhere to be seen Do you think our desires still burn

I guess it was desires

that tore us apart

There has to be passion

A passion for living, surviving

And that means detachment

Everybody has a weapon to fight you with

To beat you with when you are down

There were too many defences between us

Doubting all the time

Fearing all the time

Doubting all the time

Fearing all the time

That like these urban nightmares

We'd blacken each other skies

When we passed the subways

we tried to ignore our fate there

Of written threats on endless walls

Unjustified crimes carried

in stifled calls

Would you walk with me now

through this pouring rain

It used to mingle with our tears

then dry the hopes that we left behind

It rains even harder now