The Metamorphic Heart

The Metamorphic Heart

It's Christmas after all.
Of sweetness it may not be wrong,
this chamber of the damned,
with destiny to take the spears of politesse,
break, and give again,
live as if the age were new...
as if there were a healing God within,
not out beyond the stars. It knows
the perfidy of humankind.
It knows itself.

For there is bleeding, here, and cold.
There is crusting on the heart;
a wellness quite apart from charity,
a schism of the soul that never heals at all
but festers and divides
and in its agony succombs to war.

It's Christmas.
There is death upon the field of sweetness;
There is valor dressed in blindness
for the zeal to coverup.
There are carols out there,
loud enough to mask the sighs,
the wrenching, last goodbyes we say.
There is a baby there, to pray to.

Somewhere, lost out there
among the penitents upon their knees
...caught up in all this splendor,
there is peace.
~