Similis Smiles Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

Like the moon, he speaks - a silver-
tongued devil dressed in black,
his words slithering across my skin
like rain on the rhombus of a diamondback.

Similis smiles like a vacant house,
like the death of a dappled dove;
and like stains in a broken China cup,
he is at the bottom when it comes to love.

For his heart is like a mangled mass,
a mountain crumbled as grains of sand.
Like a tear to the eye, he clouds the sight,
like a veil of fog across the land.

The senses are stifled from his desert air,
like pressing fingers around my throat.
He slips like a stone, a rolling stone,
into the great ache of life's emote.

Like the grave, he is full of bones -
the ancient sorrow of hapless isles.
He is a carcass of man, an empty shell;
and like a leper, Similis smiles.

Note: A simile is a figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase introduced by like or as as in: He was as strong as a bull. (Latin, neuter of similis, like.) Thus, the name, Similis Smiles.