7:46 PM

Had I known I'd be such a child of darkness

I would have cursed the stars from the womb.

So many little graves lie capillaried in this skull:

mapped tributaries of innumerable

passings before my first footfalls.

Nostalgia tugs like an anxious toddler, but

for what?  Not those brief flares.

For  something before (before?) the stars spoke time

and time whored itself, beguiling every innocent,

tumescent, ectopic, drear.

Alas, to have emerged as dumb infants

instead of grizzled skeletons knowing already the

traitorous strangle awaiting --

to be cataracted and crooked from the start

and thereby, lesser rail.

Damned be consciousness, that eternally

feasting beast, grotesque nostrils flared

sniffing the whorling winds of excrement.

Nothing but a banquet are we -- the gods,

sharks that pace us by our wounds, those

endless bloody lettings: seconds, years, decades.

Why, had I known the darkness that was sky fire

that slut, Lady Night,

I'd have chosen Morn, unbedecked,

an empty urn, naked, clear.

No one asked.  No one hears.