There is a keen sharpness
fades from memory slow like the drift of clouds
sudden steel slashing against skin
and the smell of cold iron
dripping down your hands
-blood red blood red blood-

The sky that silken blue
that very night my internal cosmos shattered:
I could still see
(and if anything, things were clearer)
but nothing made sense
trying to hold together something pulverized
drifting out into the glittery stillness of space
a trillions bits, not a single particle in contact with another
(how to be alone even in an infinite crowd)

The sky that keen blue
like cold metal
(the sky not slashing
no, even more precise than a scalpelâ€â€
God doing a thoracotomy
â€â€shaving off pieces of my heart like a microtome
-each lifeless fragment almost translucent-
-they are like slices of thin lunch meat-
-to be processed and wrapped in cellophane-
-sold for 59 cents per package)
this cold metal twilight
I think of you walking beside me
(always 5pm when I could never say to you what I meant to say)
and ponder my folly with nostalgia
You (to whom I was never anything more than a friend,
but never anything less, eitherâ€â€at least I am wise enough to understand this)
are perhaps the purest thing I've got

On this icy highway where I slide gracelessly toward a crash
in that brief fleeting kiss my treads steal from the surface
I still wonder about that road I will never be able to take
I was shivering as we lay beside each other
inches apart (receding away from each other, red-shifting like galaxies)
did I trouble your dreams?
myself, afraid to move, content with things man was never meant to be content with
staring out into the darkness
like a man struck blind

This is the treachery of time (my hapless treachery)
in the unending emptiness of my soul
(I am falling, as low as I think I am, the bottom lies further still)
What I feel for you has transmuted
into something transcending dichotomies of holiness and profanity

Though I might trespass against the laws of man
and sin against the laws of God
this fluid, diluted memory of what I never had
is the only thing I'm willing to believe in