i.

Tempting redemption fashioning
satisfaction from scarlet letters—
working into existence better
endings battered hearts embittered
by another’s passing endeavour
to weather together—stitching
with flame lies tied to tethers unfettered
lovers left tattered—here I am

                    ii.

on my knees—on my way—halfway
between Bedlam and Babylon—
wondering in my wandering
what to say—how to explain why
I went astray—having gone on
so far beyond keeping calm—crawling
along this calling’s precipice
pull—falling for the one I should

                    iii.

ignore—too sure of your Self to
settle for being abhorred for
this inverted nature of ours
others would rather scorn than learn
to warm toward—too forward—you
reward confidence with a scarcity
of carefully-chosen words too careless
to those whose cowardice returns

                    iv.

when burned by the scorching overture
of your orchestrated charms—how
powerless and forlorn those admirers
your performance allures—how more
of this worsens the thorn’s prick—twists
from those infectious-venomous
kisses a splinter of breath blowing
apart broken lips outspoken

                    v.

poets accomplish their epics
working against pain with lyrics
I learn to nurture in those moments
of searing uncertainty taking
their time and turns to turn my doubts
and fears into their illusions
of worthlessness forming tears which
tear from this face its veil—how near

                    vi.

to the gate I came—waiting some
days there still—until—when hearing
your voice—all else stills—and everything
else dissolves into glamour which
never disappears—what we two
pilgrims traversing an unholy
land encounter together—we
behold forever—adding in

                    vii.

our heads yet another story
to their tower of babble—stars
astir with echoes heaven’s rafters
bellow down with thunder-rolls of
uncontrollable laughter—storming
endings to scenes beginning in
our disbelief to seem real—how
lacklustre-saccharine serene

                    viii.

it somehow seems to always feel
when sobering reality
skips a beat and witnesses for
a second one of the dreams it
seeps in and steals from time all guarantee
of reckoning what memory
thinks it sees—as the mirage does
highways—as the blood does arteries—

                    ix.

all in an engulfing quest to
obscure our art—this calling of
ours toward the infinite we
call upon when we sense loss and
experience whenever we
play each other then depart—my
work is to open your wound so
that pain can finish where it starts.