Dear Readers—

Please enjoy the following poem from the ELEMENTAL The Power of Illuminated Love. To enjoy the book in its entirety with more than 60 full color reproductions of award-winning art plus many more poems, please click here .

I saw a sunrise bow in greeting before my brother.

The waning moon of his gaze focused

beyond the weeping and wailing of stars

falling like civilizations through my heart.

And the myriad insulting meanings of life

played upon his face like the spirits

of things I have never understood.

Out of the early morning light came

three slender beams of gold, and ruby and white

stepping through the window beside his bed

and taking upon themselves the forms

of something not quite human, not quite godly.

They exuded that brilliance barely suggested

in the paintings of this world’s masters

and by their light I stared at the

hieroglyphic lesions upon my brother’s face.

Within their empathetic glow shined the

side of my brother’s life I’d never allowed myself to see.

I saw in their arms ready to attend his trembling
the hands of lovers and strangers he had known
and I felt in their compassion his constant

struggle to differentiate between the two.

On how many mornings did you compromise

your flesh, in the absence of another’s

true affection?  When?  And how?  And why

did your need for love become so expensive

that nothing less than your life

could pay its cold exorbitant price?

These creatures made of starbreath

and visions must have seen you

in those moments that stood like walls

of alien genetics between your life and mine.

They knew what you were like, vibrating

your entire universe against the skin and tears

of another, slowly crushing your skull

between planets of intolerance and desire.

And yet they do not hesitate lifting

your sleeping soul into their embrace

the way I always did before speaking

your name, or the way I do now––watching––

the inexplicable terror of my grief

staining your passionless eyes.

I saw a sunrise take my brother into its arms

and spread his colors across the sky, burning like butterflies

from one end of the wailing horizon to the other.

 

by Aberjhani
from ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love