Rodeo

Moving into the light

With nothing in reserve

Sorrows and the void

Atoms and the dark

Split between these numbing moments

Boredom and the grave

Caught up in disgraceful thinking

Without a soul to save

Cut off from your sacred calling

Burning like the house

Sulfur rising, flesh left rotting

Broken like the rest of them

Met under horizon's longing

A place of deep regrets

Where I said your name at last

Where I burned the final bridge

Eyes wide staring into beauty

Until the tunnel dissipates

Meeting death with stomach turning

Panicked, empty, reprobate

How I hope that you remember

Imagine for me what might have been

Had there been sparks when I yelled fire

Had there been love when I sought sin

Moving out of the shadows

With no way to reverse

A love left unrequited

And no penance left to pay

Teased out on the edges

Parsed out and so frayed

Spectral tearing at the fringes

Prisms seeking rainbow's end

Scattered among the monuments

Unspoken for among the stars

Bad lands not built for redeeming

Pristine porous heart untouched

Film biting at the gate

Lust chomping at the bit

Running but I'm out of footage

No action but I'm yelling cut

There are colors underneath my eyes

Bricks sent flying like these flags

A perpetual day of half-staffs

Notwithstanding a chance of sore sights

The devil's in the dust clouds

And I'm swallowing the wind

Wrapped around unwilling fingers

A slave to being unwanted

Moving with all due haste

Towards an unsatisfying sunrise

A self-repeating cycle

Prescribed prophecy endlessly refilled

There was hope underneath these lies

A glory maybe made to last

Staged stampede already run from

Now just filling time

Shooting the Rodeo

Photo Credit: Naveen Annam, Pexels, https://www.instagram.com/naveen.annam/