// Who Are You To Do This //

How could you
let me watch this warm immaculate sun sliding its heavenly white up through dark trees
and how could you let this beauty invade itself inside my burning flesh.
How could you let me gaze up into the misty galaxies
and see everything I ever begged for as a child
come
true.
Who are you to walk through the eye of the needle and pierce my blood.
How could you let this happen, the way the fear unlocks the chains threaded through my teeth, the memories of hunger which used to snake themselves around my neck.
How could you let this ecstasy happen in plain view, out in the open meadows, in the open wounds, under the gaping cloudless indiscriminate sky, this sadistic magic, this reckless radiance, this cruel rising sun they raise up from the graveyards of the stolen mind.
The way you turn away from me is the way I am trying to learn again how to move. Downtown trains speed by in slow motion like nightmares and the tricks up my sleeve have all been forcibly removed. Who are you to be so goddamn gentle, who are you to touch my disturbance so smooth.
Where were you when I needed the sound of your madness.
Why must I sit among the red rose gardens scratching my nerves with her thorns; why would you deliver me to these black sins crawling,
just to loosen the reins I had on life,
on death,
on the blurred images repeating themselves in the mirrors down the hall.
I have written so many words and mishandled so many more than you ever cared to read.
Who are you and why have they let you in?
You see how I try to pin the butterflies to the ivory ocean waves in my hair
and all they want is to be allowed to fly.
Why do I do this thing where I try to keep what keeps me from falling apart. Should we not all run wildly toward the things which unravel us and instead give our undying gratitude to the ones who rob us blind.
Take these knives and thrust us apart at the seams. Who are you to keep the scars and the stars intact.
Is it not the seams which collect us into anguish, is it not the way our tired eyes close over our afternoon shadows which cause our disfigured lovers to look like an iron oasis of doorframes in the floor boards.
When I was strong you were desolate. When I was torn you were standing on top of a windy hill singing and pulling the swollen rain down along the rabid fires in the midst.
When I needed you you were not there.
So how could you let the sun
rise again.
How could you slope this miraculous new dawn across my face
and leave me alone
with the bloodstains on my knees.

.

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