Whatland
Nurse will tell you lies
of a kingdom beyond the skies.
But I am lost within this half world.
It hardly seems to matter now.
                                                —Genesis, from The Musical Box

A king of ghosts, I sat
on a throne in the sky
and counted all of my losses.
And I did not exist, nor
the throne, nor ghosts.
In the confusion of violins
and pipe smoke I heard
a song of promise and believed.
I believed in you when I fell.

Empty music in dead ears.
Your gift: my own reflection
grasping at spectral flirtations
without reply. I am not victim,
but an accident of feedback.
A misconstructed betrayal.
Touched and bled, pooling
in the divot of my faith.
I am left with the residue—
a roughness that lingers
on the tongue after the kiss.
Words of ash drifting down.

What there is: the cold
and the absence of other
voice to surround, other
skin to fold inside.
What I know: there is
no longer an explanation
for myself; belief, weightless,
I carry on my back.
What is left: to ride
a broken donkey back
to Whatland; to be touched
one more time; to become,
again, a king of ghosts.

Where now is the unwed
bride, the phantom who sang
to me across my void of
heart? Drawing me down to                                     we are
this ruin of bone and silence.                         echoes in time
We are hallucinated moons.
A covenant of thunder
without rain. I am standing
across a waste of glass.
You collapse in my thoughts
like sand.

"Suspended Planet" 3D Render by Ivan Young