Daphne Guinness - Marionettes

Many marionettes
Dripping from your fingers
Grinning, mesmerized
The foolish ones, they linger

Dancing to your time
Rattling to your metronome
Painted and gilded
Lamed to the bone

All your parlour games
Spellbinding patterns in their brains

Sucking your cheroot
Worshipping your photograph
Like a peepshow prostitute
A voyeuristic phonograph

Masque grotesques
Performing pirouettes
Shadowy silhouettes
Ghastly rictus smiles
Sickly in the gaslight
Finally extinguishing memories of a past life

You sold your soul
So long ago
Paid in silver
Let the candle blow
And on your own

With your reflection
You spread the cards
But you never find the fool

Spinning your web,
your ectoplasmic ball of gloss
Handing around your
sweetly poisoned candy floss

To the dolls of your desire
Come hither, come higher
Stand closer to my fire
Surrender, surrender
To the kiss of the abyss.