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I see you
reflected in the lapis-crown discarded,
your face a mask of indifference and regret
as your hands grow white upon the throne.

I hear you
in the breeze that sings your praise no more,
mere echoes to and of your glory,
absent of the hate you never spoke.

I taste you
in silvern springs turned foul,
recalling the water's sweetness
before you opened your veins to poison the stream.

I smell you
in the carrion carried away,
their plight unequal to ashes
that were as snow before your penultimate dawn.

I feel you,
in my blood upon the briar-lance,
and I cannot but fall to knees
that for ages have refused to bend.

Where have you gone?
I still recall the resolve in your farewell,
bitterness masking anguish,
as I took wing upon the wind of change.

I have yearned,
locking away the stars turned black
to pray beneath a cloak of gold,
forgetting principalities forgone.

And I have searched,
laying open my heart on trails through night,
wandering on stones unborn,
contemplating a return to dominion.

I claim the fruit of wisdom rotten,
though I would never bereave myself of life,
and marvel at the chosen tree
split apart where once you touched the Earth.

I collect the dust of children's passion
and fill the cup of pity,
only to wonder at your mercy
and if it is mercy at all.

I sing the serpent's lullaby
that before I disguised as a hymn.
The palace seems to beckon me,
but empty halls offer no allure.

Night falls upon the eaves
and I think of virtues left behind.
Only now can I lie down,
and dream myself to death.

Lama sabachthani?

Here is a garden that shall never die,
and I am lost within it,
abandoned even by anguish;
rooted as a stone in fullest bloom,
a child of nightly unfound heavens
weeping at the grandeur.

Not for want,
nor my precious vanity;
I am spared of vindication,
held aloft on quivering strings
watching the birth of oblivion,
waters rising to the ether's cusp,
gasping at ghosts.

And it wasn't diffidence that stayed my hand,
heeding the sound of breaking bones less the snapping of the quill.
More, I could not write the registry of Time without bias.

Denied the tide,
my vigil is relieved by luminous shadows,
their cowls concealing the effigy of wings,
though I fear the thought of folded fingers hiding knives.

While emotions flounder, a foundation unsettled,
I find myself lashed to vertigo:
wracked by poles,
stretched for significance.

Not for piety,
nor the silence of dead sirens,
I remake myself, contesting the mold,
besieging the world,
nestled snug between columns of faith,
far from reticence; culled of cowardice,
merely masked by malice
for a future more benign.

I woke to the sound of lynching,
with the shivering sun crawled
in naked witness from my home
out into the winter streets, newborn
to discovery and with it, the rebirth
of fear,
for the doves who left to warmer havens
and of the walls so high around me
framing the dawn in its ponderous justice,
heaving with shadows in the morning's apologia,
its distant regard transfiguring flame to unchanging
frost,
with the sound of only bare feet upon the rimy planks
to break the quiet of my reverie,
before the pallid gleam of hope went out,
constricted with a noose of passing moments,
and when soft hands closed about me,
I could not but follow in acquiescent silence,
even as they draped me 'neath the gallows
and my red-eyed executioner,
from his masked mouth whispered in angelic
remorse, “I'm sorry.”

I confess to a certain...
sympathy,
a spice of pity
coloring the feast of dispossession,
in all its amorous courses.

With arms bruised from the legion embrace,
with mouth worn raw by bloodless kisses,
I stagger in the multitude,
and even in this
I cannot but be more.

They are as trees in a colorless arbor,
stretching desperate roots
into an heliacal abyss,
a variegated ocean,
to its amorphous depths,

like vines,
raising a slow siege against
the trees of the world,
longing for the rapine of apples,
but denied even the dream of savor,

seeking, ever seeking
in the giving
another piece of the feast,
one more bite
from the assuring loaf.

And I feed them.
From my blood I give them water,
from my flesh, the salmon of a thousand lakes.
They think I do this in fraternity.
They think... my words are for their ears.

I stand among them,
wreathed in adulation
as the sun to winter roses,
and they do not wonder why.
They do not taste my words.

Here, beneath the judgment of the skies,
in open wonder to the skepticism of the horde,
I am draped with the mantle of starving love
and crowned in cavalcade
by oaths unto death.

But I cannot see them, only through them,
past the veils and sighs of praise.
When I raise my cup with theirs,
I swallow lead.
I realize...

that I am utterly alone.

We carry the gift
of the most humane hubris,
a vanity only the blind can bear.
In the hallmark of this splendid suffering,
we have become sovereign,
fettered only by a conceptual damnation.
A fundamental sentence of loss.

We are a kind
of promiscuous precision,
wearying the world with gratitude.
With all the trappings of divine denial,
we reign like a palsied spider
in triumphal vigil from the refuse-throne.
An ascendancy of perspective.

We bear the seal
of every honor unearned,
decorating history with meaning.
For all the grace of these mortal mercies,
we ring hollow to the reckoning,
mantled in the dross of lifetimes.
Endowed with the sublime justice of dying.

I took up the pen of truth
and went to write the name of oblivion in my soul,
only to find that it was already there.

In the name of symbiotic suffering,
I demand the answer of love.
For sorrows shared, I relent,
and concede to a moment's joy.

I bled out time, collecting every drop,
and made a well for wishing
doom upon each and every star.

We hold hands with broken fingers,
and every reaffirming squeeze
brings comfort side-by-side with pain,
but my grip is growing weaker.

I walked the floor of the abyss
and allowed myself to dream,
giving birth to a cosmos in all its splendor of decay.

This is the underlying sentiment,
the existential crutch and the most insidious of drugs.
This is the vampire's Nirvana, the kiss of a saprophyte angel.
And I will never give it up.

I went looking for God in the forest,
but found only unburied dead.
They died without mercy,
died without justice.
This is the world of the born,
of the trauma of life and its vicious relent.
Throats savaged in clinging moments,
eyes gored for the sight of truth.
These are my kin,
my perilous neighbors with whispers of bounty,
all fallen away, laid to waste by living,
upon ground that knows nothing of sacrament.

And the sky watches all
as a craven from judgment,
the only true immortal,
ascendant abstraction
protected from pain.

I went looking for a good place die,
well in advance, but even still.
I found a necropolis of temples,
the ruins of unliving stone and nothing more.
I spoke to the emperors of the grave,
plead my case before their gallows-thrones.
Chewing on regret, with mouths filled with dust,
their lips uttered only denials.
I never made demands of the future,
never reached out for angels' hands.
I did not ask for eternity,
but was it so much to wish for, an unfettered soul?

And I will never understand
the cost of my condemnation,
the tax on empathy,
as I open my veins
in consecration.

When I drove the nails through your hands,
was it pleasure?
When I pierced your side,
was there anything left to harm?

We have spoken at length, you and I.
We have suffered the world,
sat amid the agony of high thrones.

And when I broke your legs,
was that thanks I heard?
When I crowned you my God,
did you weep for my loss?

Those words of yours, so long ago,
I remember them.
We were talking of justice.

When I brought them all to witness,
was it not the moment of your glory?
When I made them wail,
did you not feel loved?

As we stood there,
looking down upon the kings,
I could swear I saw you smile.

When I watched you die,
did I think of all we had shared,
our covenant?

I think I did.

I saw that smile, as the flames kissed you,
as your blood turned to poison.
I heard your laughter echoing
against the ceiling of Hell.
I smelled the bliss
of your flesh as it blackened.
I could taste your lust in the air.
I felt your sorrow melt away, your shame.

I watched you suffer, as no man has suffered,
and I knew you wanted more.