Der Mond

Under the pink moon and fuchsia skies,

A black rock stood over crimson tides.

Golden dust, glazed and split,

Sat on the painted mountain’s tip.

The dark stone fell through the rosy clouds,

Spreading the air and tumbling down

Over flashing cobalt hurricanes

Across the open Rockies’ plains.

Summer snow melted in Houston:

Destruction never stretched too thin,

Fatal nuclear white flakes

Set like a mane on roaring lakes.

But still, the pink moon stood aside,

Observing all the fuchsia skies

While the whole globe filled with sizzling fire

You liar

We fell hand in hand, still side by side,

In two paths, diverged in cosmic time.

Both strings of life held taut—

In one, I live; the other, not.

I sat in my steel box.

With strange eyes, you watched

Me press the button soft,

And then my atoms were lost.

Immersed in strange nuclear clouds,

There was a lovely flash that was agonizingly loud.

I was too special for chance to make

The path that my soul would take.

So they strung a noose of bosons neat

And spun me around my feet

Above uranium trapdoors

As my memories come back once more.

I remember when we first met

At a tailor shop of no behest:

I walked in, you snipped black thread,

And it dropped before you lifted your head.

In slow motion, you glanced at me

Full of awe and joyful mystery.

You saw the first flash in tears,

And then your brightness reappeared.

And after a while, you

Laughed till I died, but know this, too:

I stood there infinitely bereft

When you left.