Red, not gray

(...here is that knife...)




I do not know what has happened to us.

It is too much to speak of.
It is worse than you think.

It is always worse.

~~~

Here.

I have it for you,
right here in my hand.

It lies—
restlessly, 
relentlessly—
giving its last for you,
giving it up.

Isn't that enough?

~~~

Two objects in space
meet, collide and fall 

apart.

Any and every 
direction is down.

All we can do is 

fall
and 
fall.

~~~

There!
Take it!

Was that too loud for you?
Did it hurt your ears? 
Did you get some on your face?

Now 
you can feel it. 

It is still warm.
It is still young
at its core, 

at the very center
of so long ago.

~~~

Beneath the crust,
the mantle 
is heat.
Lead cauldron.
Furnace gold.

More often 
some baser substance
like dirt
prevails.

~~~

Go ahead.
Touch it.
Feel its slick muscle,
its waning strength.

It is all the blinding colors of the eye
that you will not see.
They are not fading.
They are slowly burning for you.

If you listen closely,
you can feel them running
down your face.

~~~

Grab a handful. 
Watch it fall to earth.

You will never know 
which way the wind blows, 
see it shade to light
until it is gone.

All you have left 
is the feeling of dust
on your hands.

~~~

If there is darkness, 
it is absence.

If there is light, 
it is presence.

Either way it pulls out the center of you. 
Like the windlass to the bowels of St. Erasmus,
it pulls the inside out of you.

Go ahead,
close your eyes and feel the colors of it
squirming out of you.

Can you taste them,
rolling like iron 
on your tongue?

~~~

The roads are laid out 
with a precise machinery
that clicks and hums
about its business,

doing only what we tell it 
and everything that we fear.

These things are out of our hands now.
The sacrifice has been made.
The moon is already 
too full for us.

~~~

It won't be long now.
Soon, they will come for me.
They will put their fingers on my neck. 
They will see if there is anything that they can do.
They will decide that there is not.
They will make their pronouncements.
They will talk of how they knew that it would be this way
and how they had to try, none the less.

~~~

A job has no blood in it.
It is a calculation.

It is the job of a job to calculate

the balance
in the hand 
of the blind.

The operators 
have all gone home.

~~~

It is almost over now.

~~~

Soon it will not matter 
if you can 
or cannot see 
all the shades 
that oxidize in air.

~~~

Here.

Please take
what I have given.

It is never
enough.

Now leave.