A practical deity.
Flashing back to the ’70s.
Of the few times I’d seen you cry,
That was the one.
The one that showed me
Just how broken you’d become.
Just inside, you’d ruled the night,
With blasphemies and wine
But you had to make a point.
We had to step outside.
You know, I forget sometimes
I haven’t already written about this.
That I just let this particular story exist
Without a song.
Without a poem, or a painting.
I just let it weave itself through
Them all.
Without a manifestation,
Or a name.
But there, among a countless multitude
Of headless, endless hours,
Was a sign.
A symbol, for my eyes to detect,
And to be carefully plucked
From the patchwork skin of the distracting,
Overwhelming Demon
Whose own fate it would betray.
And maybe I was lucky,
Or maybe it was obvious,
But I caught it.
When it happened.
The first time.
I saw it.
The humanity.
And also, the end.
Actually coming.
I can remember my shoulders shifting back
And my chest inflating.
I was confident that I knew.
If only for a moment, if only in that place,
I knew you could lose.
And I felt a hope swell up inside me, only to vaporize…
As you wiped your eyes,
On the night of our long battle
Before a newborn Moon.