By dark I mean the space of what
we can’t yet perceive but creation fills
and our heart feels, good light catches
on its subject like a bad cliché, peels

away like pearls from the inside
of death’s shell shaken from the light’s ring to
tell the fallen that they fell, this
is heaven for few, meaningless for none,

one moment of return to the
beginning, the reason why I do what
I do when my sentences run
on the way an effusion of neon

does through a twisted tube, transmutes
every pornographic fantasy
to a gilded ounce of truer
truth’s potential reality’s deluge

alluring to lick at opened
wounds the sexually frustrated and
spiritually confused with
its lethal promise of “LIVE NUDES,” making

nothing of something struggling to
prove unsung innocence belies this dull
inexperience of mine at
setting a tone, creating a mood from

elusive feelings I have been
concealing, abuse eclipsed behind this
blood-heavy heart of stone, turning
inside-out bolder emotions than my

words can throw out to hide, a mind
imprisoned by the Sisyphean task
of describing how much I want
you to know why when I invited you

to take a bite, dared you to press
your lips to this fruit’s flesh, it was beyond
damaged, bruised at the edges and
wet, already broken and being shed.