O love

I.

O love, you do not know

the names of men who've trodden

searing sands

in search of thee.

Your cruelty exists

alone, in the fact of your indifference,

the inextricable burn

of your neglect

which, when I compare it to the sun,

whose all-knowing glare

has crisped my back

for years, is incomparably more great,

more egregious and final,

the last thing I dare to entertain

before a long walk through the desert,

one Name of all in my heart,

and my mind trying so hard to forget

that you abandoned me to snows

whose clamping bite

I could kill neither with flames,

nor with thy countenance:

I required, require your presence

of all,

and that

is the greatest of cruelties,

a ringing slap of irony,

the very salt clogging my brain,

thy sugary remains

stained ever into me,

for I shall carry your filth with me

out into the dunes

and the merciless continuance of sand,

whose bounds thou dost not know,

nor dost thou care to.

II.

What a pull of me

into thy snuff-embrace

of bliss, both lie and brief.

09/04/2016

en route to London