It's late at night when you realize she's not the one you loved,
or anyone for that matter.
It's late at night when your mind,
a towering serpent of indecision and malnourishment,
a rushing stream of water from the broken end of a fire hydrant,
tearing through steel and ice cubes that litter a middle age class of numeral reunion,
discover the over-keyed lock where metal bends and screams.
Covered in flies and rice,
it retains its bondages, exchanging freedom for self-loathing,
*****-dying in single file,
a honey-gilded tune not thrice too soon.
I seek the corridor where my true love will wait for me,
breathing me in, yet the cane of a blindman.
A clopping corridor, sleek and cobblestone,
artificial and vast, astral.
My true embrace will be that cold one of death, knocking at my door,
pleading my friendship,
sapping from me ***** and calloused hands.
A wet kiss on the nose, a reddened tongue.
I don't know the latitude of my existence.
I can't feel the reality of my throat,
of the gushing and the breathing of winds,
blocking the eternal stream of air.
The currents broke, and from within blew a heavenly melody,
that pierced cold ears boundlessly.
Again, that same street.
Lit faintly from above and from the participants in its ritual.
They burn the wax together.
And they sink,
O paradox!
Together, with their victories of mental triumph,
they recede further into torment and inefficiency,
quantified and numerical,
arrange themselves by merit and consequence.
Again, they sink and plummet and fall,
deeper into wonder and beauty.
Until it abandons them and spills over the edges,
splattering the circumscription,
dabbing alligator skin and sunglasses.
Inspecting the damage done,
he lifts from within its belly a tattered and worn skull,
that of a Man, no less.
Rusting in the desert, alone and among his gods,
bone-dry plains and dunes of dust,
rumbling agelessly the shaken scared earth.