Modern Romanticism

Tortured under rain,
with your final word in.
Under your breath,
sheltered with these stains,
blank in this ruin
where faces are crossing
from their forms, their histories
retraced from their passing.

I am attached to those signs
on a road, soaked in aftermath.
I have not bloomed in this ungraceful,
expensive method to see me through,
to see me at peace,
among those who reside
in this place, within this space
where most are dead.

I am attached to whatever’s left,
though everything has become
a scene for later, remembered
words that don’t trail back,
when I am unable to look back.

I am unable to believe
in what came first,
to that kiss beneath morning stars,
that breath that burned
over flesh that had been birthed.

I will drag into myself
all that will weep for a man
who keeps his shelter, beneath,

beneath a moon that drained a spark
from a sun, upon its own rise,
upon a line, where exists a horizon,
for a signature to be written
where promises were given.