i.

The heaviest burden is lifting
the heart of another, knowing in
secret that every saint is just
a dead magician, swift mischievous
enactor of heaven’s miracles

     transcended after mastering sin

until it appeared again to be
innocent, skull filled to the brim with
the sacred knowledge that each fever’s
remembered dream is a drop of this
contagion’s heat, wisdom’s crimson seed

     spilling from a god-fisted syringe

to the heart bringing about the soul’s
prayed-for, delayed awakening, his
breath’s jet ink demiurgic spittle
of dangerous things to think or say
injecting transformation deep through

     its layers of beef until it finds

a way, makes of blind men’s opinions
a new belief in being seen, I’m
unrecognizable ever since
then even to my Self, condemning
things now which had happened to appeal

                    ii.

to me before, burned out but not hurt
by an awareness all the more full
that I haven’t yet experienced
the Best Days of My Life™, satisfied
that it’s à propos their lethal dose

     will come in time, if not tandem, with

the rest my shortness of breath has been
seeking since the beginning of my
preoccupation with my final
destination, transitioning as
infamy always does to being

     finally recognized by critics

as inexplicably sanctified,
mind knowing without seeing, thinking
without speaking, but never healing
without ever first being touched by
what love’s cold electric kiss of bold

     lightning does to closed eyes, this polar

surge of a second chance at life which
strikes them both only once, never twice,
opens them wide to sight and survive
the solar purge of invisible
light, invisible light, light, light, light.