Palladium

After darkness of creation, burning black bonfires are born from the torches of God
you who is redeemed by dreaming desires, you must survive the great disasters—
witness the sun’s burning anguish and its palladium, curtains of sunlight
in a universe of night lights, witness yourself burning, luminous and alive
be born again in the voyaging winds, learn to disappear once again

I prayed for an escape—from clarity
the decadence! of revolt!
Desire burned like devastation in me
desire birthed acres of wasteland in me
calamities descending from the heavens
the decadence! of reveries!
Witness the evening earth in its silent withering
I saw a scatter of stars through the bars of Babylon
when desire burned its luminous escapes in me
Raphael on the black asphalt streetlight seas
behold your roses of Bethlehem, a crown of thorns
Vanitas in the dark, make death an ecstatic art

I wished the eternal one had made you again and again— someone like you, someone burning with bright empires of light, a conduit for the breathing universe. A breath of life! And thus I survived. Bear me from the labyrinth Babylon. Bring me to the palladium of night horizons. I am resigned to my grief. Now there is only silence, soundless snowfields, echoes across a vast emptiness. The lost rush for success. In lush longing at the doors of Orpheus. Beneath the leering violence of stage lights, curtains drawn for tragedy. Wake, Babylon!— Ravish me into extinction. Bloodline of the blazing Furies: I am the burning, furious one, born into storms. Shattering is stitched into my skin. The mountains beckon, calling me to a vital stillness again. I feel beautiful but weak. I hate to be perceived in an inchoate form, but we are always becoming. Am I too fragile for this life? In the end, I will have to forgive.

I loved—
I loved—
I loved—
and I lived