Diamond

He was wealthy, with a reputation
for breaking hearts and violence
in his quest for love, not infatuation,
an elusive gem in a mine of loneliness.

Diamonds are darkling magnets
for women of a certain kind;
they attract gossip and rumour,
but this kingpin didn’t seem to mind.

He pulled each giggling, mindless
debutante in a whirl of tipsy parties,
always on the look-out for a flawless
allotrope while he maintained sobriety.

He ignored the fact that gems are multi-
faceted, ditched so many two-faced
bitches, until one day, he met a beauty
who seemed to have fallen out of space.

With her perfect carat, cut and clarity,
Diamond was like a falling star,
an explosion of sparkling light
that he wished on from afar.

Stung by this diamond-tipped arrow,
he showered her with expensive ice;
he bought her whatever she wanted,
never thinking about the price.

It takes a diamond to scratch a diamond,
break a heart that’s made of stone,
after what seemed like a billion
years, the kingpin made her his own.

She was his amulet against danger,
his Lucy in the sky,
she made him indestructible,
she made his frozen heart fly.

She glittered like a diamond,
but her heart was soft as a pearl.
Beneath the make-up, silk and fur,
she was a flirty, fickle little girl.

There were rumours of an affair
with someone high up in the law,
so he followed her to hotels, where
he listened behind every door

until one night he burst into a room,
shot her close range in the heart,
then turned his pistol on himself.
Now they’ll never be apart.

Kim M. Russell, 19^th April 2025

It’s Saturday, and on day nineteen of NaPoWriMo the daily resource is the Gallery of Strange Museums and the optional prompt is inspired by Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s poem ‘Song’, a tragedy “both in the modern sense of an awful event, and the ancient dramatic sense of a play in which someone does something terrible, and the play’s action shows the consequences”.

The poem “has a timeless, could-have-happened-anywhere/anywhen quality” associated with blues and folk ballads – including murder ballads.

Our challenge is to write poems that tell stories in the style of a blues song or ballad. Not feeling great this morning, so I reworked an old poem.