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Emily
In Chaucer’s story there are two heroes, who are practically indistinguishable from each other, and a heroine, who is merely a name.
J R Hulbert
Arc? Dead. And if you’re sniffing for his body
you won’t find nothing: ransack the Big Smoke
from Bow to Bank. Arc fell for Emily
ten feet deep . . . I’m Pal, Emily’s alter.
Think ego. Arc and me, we shared a cell
for months, it was a shrine to her, a temple.
 
I miss him, like a gun to the temple.
Too close. Two men locked in a woman’s body,  
her messed-up head. When I say shared a cell    
I’m talking brain. She became us. Arc smoked
the Romeos, and me, I smoked all tars,
we breathed out on her name ah! Emily.             
Blonde, with blacked out highlights, Emily.                 
Our host, the goddess. Looks are temporal.                 
Who reads her diagnosis? It don’t alter
the facts. She made me up to guard her body
from predators, the silhouettes in smoke.
It’s when she wears the hour glass and plays damsel,
she lets me out. It messes with their brain cells,  
my voice, her face. All men want Emily,             
they think they have a right. It don’t mean smoke.      
She acts like growing up was Shirley Temple               
and don’t remember nothing, but her body
knows what happened happened on that altar.
Think bed . . . Arc’s dead. Broke his parole, an alter
crazy on id, he starved us all to cancel
me out for good. It’s written off, our body.                  
He fought to win: I fought for Emily.                           
I’m dead beat, but I won up here, the temple,     
the messed-up head. Sent her a ring of smoke.
 
Having a big fat Romeo to smoke                       
don’t make you Winston Churchill. Arc was altered.
He won the war but lost the plot. The temple
became his tomb. And me, I got the damsel.
She don’t know yet. We’re stitched up, Emily,  
one and the same, one rough cut mind, one body . . .       
 
Must’ve blacked out . . . This body ain’t no temple
but what’s the alternative, a padded cell?
Got anything to smoke? . . . I’m Emily . . .