God people hurt so bad
the emptiness in the room
absorbs the auras of the lamps
as if there were ghosts breathing
in their dreams on the terminal ward.
Silence. Dark. Does it? Does it?
Get any darker than this?…
Does it put a hand on the brow
and brush the wet hair away
that’s laced with mortality
that breaks your heart given
she wanted her hair braided
when she was a girl
and her mother never did it that way
until she died, thinking the mirror had lied.
Rabbit, run, run, run, run
as far away as you can
scampering across the brittle blue snow,
first of the year, run, my fleet footed friend
for all your worth to the ends of the earth.
Solitary figure startled in a crosswalk
don’t stop. This is earth.
Where the innocent suffer
the biggest idiocies of desecration
known to men and bugs
since man was created
in the image of god as a metaphor
for what we’ll never know about ourselves.
People hurt. It’s arbitrary.
And worthless
as a transparent light bulb
that’s just burnt out in a housewell.
Fiat lux. Let the shadows begin.