Love’s Brassy Deception

Mum said I wore my heart on my sleeve,
gave the-shirt-off-my-back, I was
wild for naked love.

Life’s bright goal, give it all you got, heat and light
bursting through me, brave and brassy
like no one was watching.

Inside a force beyond understanding thrust
and burnt, an exploded universe,
stripped my bones clean.

Like Joan Jett, k.d. lang, I craved love. Naïve,
filled with chivalrous intention, words,
passion, Vita and Virginia.

All aches, as Dolly lamented losing to Jolene.
I felt Piaf’s pain, sang out loud with Dusty.
Me, boy-girl raging to honour love.

Kids yell weirdo but I was real and true, pierced
by a Wonder Woman javelin. A furnace
inside for Xena, Maid Marian.

No gargoyle confessions, cathedral aflame,
locked love inside, aunties tried
to save me from the fall,

I was that hunted monster, perched in the tower
with Esmerelda, my bestie the bell-ringer,
bronze’s toll concealed our mad laughter.

About the author

Shaine Melrose is a writer/poet, gardener, living on Kaurna Yerta. Shaine is a 2025 Red Room Fellow, and their work has been published in numerous anthologies and journals. Shaine’s poetry collection The Natural World Somersaults was published in 2024 by Walleah Press.

Photo by Jamez Picard on Unsplash.