The Bewilderments

I thought it was divine to perish before the moonlight
I thought it was the end but I survived many times

At the gates of Babylon I prayed until dawn
Wilting in the land of falling rains
Fractured by appetite
Glowing noons in beckoning Babylon
Love is a humiliation ritual
I was a pathetic universe of a being
Waiting in the land of falling rains
My life ricocheting from so many graces
still: the wasteland of these glass evenings
some oblivion took a stake through me these glass evenings
Annihilation in the shadows of the giants
Black gales after black gales
I remember the endless rains
I remember the phantom pains
seeking spectacles to fill voids
tomorrow is another world
may the massacre of spring never arrive
all the wastelands I made
angels speaking the language of war
I made a divinity out of my fragility
this agony! who I am! who I used to be!
and who will witness me?
bear me airborne from the wounded world
bear me to the promontories
before the sun’s corridors of fire
before the incoherence of so many worlds like dormant storms
How could I survive
you were a miracle of light with the cruel emptiness of the winds dissolving sunrise
Desire the star remnant of a dream or a nightmare
yes you banished me to stranger seas
in the hollow hours of morning
zephyrs floated towards teeming heaven
This is vacant awakening
Stars abandon your flames
witness the viper of Paradise killing you twice
once for desire
once for appetite
Desire a dark and drowning tide
I called you mine
Djinn Fires abandon your flames
This is vacant awakening
Chained in the darkness
And yes the darkness gained My Name
La Divina Commedia
everywhere I look: broken worlds
Madonna on the altars
You captured the gaze of the angels
These deserted eternities
I was banished to the edge of grief
I bargained with the dark
What a small catastrophe:
I witnessed me
What a small catastrophe
Dissipated me
Did the stars boast!
Of these oblivions I chose
What small apocalypse would outlast me
Madonna in the Mezzanine of mist
Moraines in oblivion
Leviathan awakening catastrophes
Did the stars boast
Of the oblivions I chose
Exit like the wilting flowers
Surrender into the hollow hours
Bewildered in a labyrinth of mist
Yes I dissipated by summertimes
Desire burned like devastation in me
Desire burned a wasteland in me
I exited like wilting flowers
I surrendered to the hollow hours
I bargained with the mist
I said watch me dissipate
One day you won't remember this
One day you will remember this
Beloved did you pulverize by the mornings
awakening in those wide wastelands I warned you
The fissures said dissipate
One day you won't remember this
My life ricocheting from so many graces
I was remnants of a wasteland
The stars boasted of you
Beloved did you perish
In those wide wastelands
Beloved did you perish
Before the starlight
These were the remnants of a daydream
I witnessed Madonna in a mezzanine of mist
My life ricocheting from so many graces
Desire that wasteland
The Spectacle at Sundown
Reverie in the morning skies
I was their sacred sacrifice
Madonna of the coffins
We were damaged as the angels
mute before the ruining winds
Lily of the valley, Lilith in the evenings
You were the universe dreaming
Like an apprentice of the divine sacrificing paradise
Saints bargaining with the void
You were fragile as withering white lilies
Memory and metamorphosis
You were my dream creation
Blossoming consciousness before revelation
Eyes glimmering like diamantine rivers
Ceremonials of a jeweled dead empire
Saturn the Devourer ushering chaos 
We lived in burning cities
Seven days in Carthage
we made epitaphs for the raging wilds
Dreaming while wide awake
Shadow and abyss
Your voice this echo in the hills
World of metamorphosis
and I vanished—
and I vanished into the mezzanine of mist—
You had the immensity of the void
Your nameless shadow beckoning
Madonna of the tightropes
I served my sentence in the time of the winds
Dreams disappearing before dusk
Imagining you another shore was like opening a wound
Escape from Eden I wandered towards the warm flames
Desire burned like desperation in me
And the choir angels said the dark days pass
The dream: disappear before the ceremonials of dusk
Age of lightning
From the sundew of summer to winter’s cinders
This is the wager of the adamantine galaxies
That I was your sacred reverie
stars and missiles, replenish your dead empires
This sentence of life in divine recursion
This is the whirlpool of fire
This is how you die
In a silver shrine of moonlight
With the radiant lambs and the rest of the fallen Earth
The falcon arrives at dawn with its surviving wing
This universe ending in winter cinders
Witness the unknowable world
The quiescence of starless dusk
crossing tsunamis to stranger seas
Who am I in this luminous fire?
Who am I in this collapsing universe?
Who am I in the calamity of dark?
Who am I in the faraway lands?
Besieged sunrise and its chandeliers
In my veins, a kindling of light
This bright universe
rioting in my blood
ceremonials in the wind
Madonna in the meadows
but the storm clouds hovered
we were small lights in the universe
Who am in faraway lands
Who am I the calamity of the dark?
You forged of shadow and bone
Who am I that thou say thou art?
Desire the diviner in the escaping wild
Who I am is annihilation
Black lands like the angels dark palms
Who am I in these faraway lands?
Who am I in the calamity of the dark?
You reminded me of a ruin of starlight
What wild brilliance
Once your blinded eyes witnessed me
Lost in these nowhere horizons
Surviving the ages of decadence
speak again snake praying on paradise
I will remember this deserted Earth
Blood-blooming wound from the moon burning in my throat
Reviving spring, do not redeem me
I was forever lost in these infinities
Longing for extinction in the wilderness of the midnights
and I vanished like the light winds—
and I vanished into delight—