dense and soul-heavy, 
you have this sense that joyful love
will never be yours, and as you
walk the wet pavements trying 
to free the heart, your mind is a whirling, 
dizzy Milky Way, a Hell-bound night bug 
swirling crazily, crazily in the feeble 
streetlights, memories underfoot, always 
underfoot and armed, like water 
gnawing at your muddy banks, gentle 
killers of your dreams, in your blood, 
so shuttered in your blood that no one's
 guiltless, not even God, anymore

Waiting for the days of feasting 
on your corpse, you wish that 
healing snows would soon cover this 
death you hold your breath for, 
and looking up at the stars you see 
your slated fate 
and wonder through tears why your
boundless, unchanging love could 
never find another like it; 
is it because the sunlight you
bore attracts only the Dark,
the Other? your fiery rays hiding
a black hole sucking in all the broken 
hallelujahs that you are for God, 
for father, for all men

emerging from your dreams, on 
the horizon, another bold,
promising lover, his eventual 
turn to violence, his long
goodbyes patiently waiting their
turn, ritualed as any 
christening, and you, sullen, listen 
hard for the hordes, the demons
that will ruin it all eventually,
the loathesome hubbub of 
shattered hopes they
leave, ghosts in the wet mud, 
and there you'll stand in the end, 
draped in your crosses, sobbing, 
left killed to the bone yet
again, waiting for the angels to
carry you at last to the caves,
behind the stone they'll 
never roll away

--Jo VonBargen 2011


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