Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.
          —Mt 10:8 (NRSV)¹

     Lay without name those whose
lips would break silence to say it,

     to pronounce after you
came the way, anonymous as

     angels, you take it for
granted, this making all messed up

     of a love neither of
us intended, yet now pretend

     we each wanted, both left
somehow invested in this fool’s

     errand your touch tempted
to fullness of fluorescing

     extravagance this flesh
full now of some foreign vibrance,

     some forlorn Nihilism
inside us performing silenced

     optimisms rising, signs
violences, when subsiding,

     almost zodiacal,
trace strangest alliances on

     faces, lionizes
across these aspecting griefs we

     confide in the eyes of
those whose sights we hold close then let

     go, silent pages pale
with faithlessness filling in, when

     belief fades away, this
unspoken broken record of

     repetitions midnights
together taper through missives

     envisaged yet never
written on walls vapour papers.

__________
¹The Gospel According to Matthew, Chapter 10, Verse 8 in “The New Covenant Commonly Called the New Testament of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: New Revised Standard Version” of The Holy Bible: containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books: New Revised Standard Version, published at New York by Oxford University Press in 1989; page 10.