PAIN BEFORE A PRAYER

Photo from Unsplash.

The orange behind the treeline calls to prayer, 
but I can’t pray,

Or in figures: the sirens, the roar, the sobbing
Though past, still sound today

So to hope, to doubt these minutes, these words
Will dim what glows behind my closed eyelids.

But today the Lord sees pain,
So I reply, mixed rosewater and lithium:

“You’ve been saying this for years,”
To ringing silence -

What are these years? What is this spiderweb
That tangles through them?

What does it mean to ache
And no longer feel it? Really,

I find the interested pass of the stranger
More exciting than love

I want to find some great notion that
Will liberate me

I wait for someone to tell me what I am
Since that thing ablaze

Has consumed its share of self, so that I am
Proportionally empty heat, and warm, teeming earth

A thousand ports are calling,
Maybe one of them is home -

I suppose I mean I want to be the villain
So at least I feel that I am in control

Because life has given me a private revelation
Of atrocities only I will ever know

As you, Lord, see me in the setting sun
Listening to symphonic silence in the glow