Artificial Sunset

Bathed in the buzz
of an artificial sunset,
I turn my head
to see you turn your head
back from looking at some distance
not present in the landscape
outside this window.

This is when I most want to kiss you,
and taste the exhalation
of some breath you’ve taken
in your other world.
I imagine it to be seasoned
with garlic and blood
and the mutterings of some ghost.

I have lived alone for 47 years,
for 17 years,
for 9 months,
for 13 hours,
for one and a half hours,
for 3 minutes.
But how can loneliness
be measured with time?

I have rolled the stone of my tongue
across your body, and it has learned
the songs of gravity.

Now is when the flowers fill the sky.
Now is when the roads reach
beneath my raised foot.
Now is when the danger is total
and terror loses all urgency.

All imagining vanishes
and the taste arrives.



by jerry gordon
4.9.2012