Penance Waged

A thousand years,

Beyond our hastily labored half-a-lifetime,

Fathomless, as it touches me,

Our dream shattered,

In the swelter of a summer night,

A tale of toeing the edge of a hunter’s moon,

Mocking my fealty to her fellow fallen stars,

A cursing formed of a tabooed fruit,

As an offering to heartless gods.

We are wakened by a vile,

Blear-eyed summons,

To a reckoning,

With deeds of neglect and selfness,

To a roasting of my pitiful hubris.

Deluded,

Expecting,

That I could be present,

In my absence.

And as we tread,

The gallows of conversation,

I am tormented by nerves,

Assaulted by foreign feelings,

Like searing shuriken,

Tossed by frigid butterflies,

Victimized by,

Visions of her nakedness,

Viewed through other eyes,

And more.

While her battered spirit genuflects,

Never-the-less,

Laying our specialness to rest,

Raising rapidly cooling echos,

To painfully, appraising rays of light,

That search out the simplicity,

In all of this,

No longer one,

Now unified,

Solely by our lamenting,

Of a once-perfect crystal pedestal,

Crumbled and forever lost,

Whose shattering has rendered,

Well-meant words,

Blindly pledged,

To jagged shards,

Of vows, long fallen,

To regret,

And as they fall,

Spilling,

Mixing,

Memories of lives led,

Into lies wed,

Vicious remnants of empty,

Ceremonial goblets.

Denuded fictions,

An absurd promise,

Death.

Panting beneath harrowed tears,

Tears, that I have tasted,

Now, to me, more akin to,

Acid rains,

Of a spring forever spent,

In a tryst,

Dry to the touch,

Irredeemably,

Wasted,

She sends through me,

A murmur,

Moving menacingly toward eruption,

That slams my corpse to the depths,

And I am helpless to discern,

If this breathless plea,

Be from her,

Or be it born somewhere,

In the weakness of me,

Instead.

And it grates mercilessly,

Across my soul,

This song,

This beckoning,

Haunting,

Dirge,

If sadly paid to but a foregone grace,

Fall upon me,

Yet, a thousand days.

And I bend.

Because I am broken,

But more plainly,

To hear it closer.

Damned be this truth,

And more severely,

Time,

And damn these unfeigned tears,

Of a naked kind.

Credit unbosomed shame,

As penance paid,

Why,

When there is yet hate?

My loathing,

Her mourning,

All too vivid outlines of mixed flesh,

His taunting face.

Wounded,

I seethe,

Mea culpa,

Me, a cuckold,

Butt-end of endless jokes,

Reduced to a sum beneath nothing,

Damned to choose,

A me more Hosea,

Than Henry,

How many versions of my maleness,

Left to question,

A man, forced,

To know a feeling,

That love is less than.

Yet, even now, I lay me down,

Made righteous, by this wronging,

Her friend, her priest, her protector,

Her soul-mate,

As she weeps,

Her pensive smile of redemption.