Where the loneliness of each star
is as vast as all the skies,
where the night is as narrow
as every broken heart,
I searched for the alchemy of love,
for a friend
behind these smiling neon lights,
for meaning
in the stacks of advertisements—
these alluring rationalizations of being,
these endless lobbies of love's trade,
these chest-high flags of pride.
They placed me in the intervals
of the present’s wings,
wrapped in the cushioning glow of light,
boxed within stone clichés,
shelved in the phoney concord of boundaries,
filed away in the archive drawers of connection—
behind red-lit intersections
of empty cities,
behind shopping windows of small dreams,
frozen in the gaze of Barbie dolls,
behind the glassy eyes
of dollhouse beauty,
within paper greenhouses
of paper flowers.
I—who could not be contained
in the cages of dose and sketch,
shapeless yet burdened
by caricatured shapes,
unlovable,
not a rough lump of weight
for love’s golden scales,
not a virtual coin
to be exchanged in the hollow madness of colour,
not a velvet tactility
measured by a scale of affectation—
I was white gold,
thrown into the tar of blindness,
unable to buy,
unable to be sold.
