I’ve been going like this for years :
Skin stretched silkthread’s-thin , bones I’d beaten like anvils to meet my needs,
Spiraling and spinning, turbulence of a crumbling world trailing at my heals .
How grand the spectacle of my failure .
For a moment I , too , was deluded to think that combustion and success were the same .
And I could only burn for fuel the forests of my dreams .
Trouble is , the fire was more hungry than I will ever be and it closes
in on me like a vortex of beasts , picking my dreams and my flesh from their bones.
And I am left ,
cosmic bride in her orbital gown ,
tail of wonder and debris like mountains unburdening her as she tumbles
towards the inexorable diminishing of self .
Now,
towards the center of my sun ,
I am left.
Am I everything I had hoped it to be ?
Perhaps I am free ?
Perhaps the lightness in losing is true victory ?
Too fast , still , my tumbling down the aisle ,
running out of dreams and things to shed and to burn .
She waits for all of us, as at an Olympian Altar , the Woman in The Sun .
And when I come to reach the end of me ; she will consummate my life with her
apocryphal kiss .
And I will know , then , that I could never tell love from hate .
As friends and lovers watch me burn , their skeletons skulking like shadows ,
recoiling into the night .
