Travesties unseemly
Small and unremarked as may be
Separating skin from skin,
The longing lover from beloved
and from love itself.
Tearing at us, clawing.
We are awed and appalled
At the stupefying ignorance of it all.
Of that lying, of that dying
Of the spirit, of the soul
Suspended; not above and not below
And for certain, not within.
Somewhere we are shuddering,
Cowering in our crib.
The world in spin, we cannot move
To stop what is.
Holding fast at last
To some beauty we have seen,
For some brief and shining time.
What we have known to be real,
not some remote ideal.
Searching in the darkness in our chest
for something more
We can see it, shimmering and fine
Faint as if a star at rest
Surviving still that searing fire
Burning at its core.
Insistent, clinging still around us
scandalous, yet well outside
Those tender, seemly confines
Of morality and sensibility
Of comparison, of rejection or ejection.
Sordid beyond what we know of degradation
Of what we learned of abnegation
Of refusal; inadmissible.
All has flown
To a place so distant
from what we call our home.
The familiar, the known simplicities
The scents, the sounds
that echo in our soul.
Stop! We cry again. Just stop!
But it has not the will to shudder
And be done.
It must have the floor
For all there is to say, and more.
Mind unwound, we find we too have sinned.
So we will stand and cry aloud
And find forgiveness
In the swirling
of the wind.
