The Monster (I)

It is while sitting atop tall endless nights

Starring down the crater's black infinity -

The whole of the twilight buckled up beneath me

- That I can muse and discuss disasters and epiphanies

Before it buckles and swallows me up... like a... never mind...

Tonight it will be a disaster

The drama will not even play in order -

The morning after...

We're eating with brilliant smiles at the refurbished diner

Just off Rochester tucked in the parking lot on Tienken

The waitress tells us how it burnt down, rebuilt anew

It's the first time I remember her eating a burger

- I don't think this is the beginning... it's the end
     or somewhere near

I think, yes, here it is, she had such soft music on -

It was any other night...

She invited me over, that was the thing

Yet there was nothing to say, She had nothing

Just that she wanted company so I kept her such

You can never get her to talk, not even her father

Or if you do you usually regret it

- "Flyyy aaaawayyyy" it sang, beautifully

I recall what shocked me was how much she'd drank -

Awfully insistent on that sixth beer...

Once when we celebrated my first success

She had so many glasses that night, more than me

And there she was holding me up, how I loved her for it--

... Now, her leaden head plummeted into the covers

Something was lurking amongst us tonight

- "Flyyy aaaawayyyy" it sang, beautifully

Then she asked me to tell her about my house -

My house... my... house...

"It will be our hidden circular palace of the far east

In the center a courtyard is guarded by a cherry tree

The back of the house will open to an emerald vista

Down the left slope is your greenhouse for our home grown--"

... She broke into tears. This was her last chance

- "Flyyy aaaawayyyy" it sang, beautifully

We will never return from this -

All she said was "I love you"...

So I rattled her with my barren desperation until she confessed

That she had no intention of seeing the morning. And I would 

     be her testimony

That her philosophy was firm and there was no

     avoiding it - she had taken all her medicine

I demanded she cry for help - she wouldn't - and so I cried
     for her and to the world beyond
So she cursed me for knowing what she was and loving her
     and we stood in the song's silence
- "Flyyy aaaa**"... I found it repulsive.

The songless void exposed us and revealed us for who we were...
... The Morning Dove and the Midnight Owl
She reminded me that I had ruined everything
And I followed the EMS with puffy eyes and trembling thoughts
And watched her in the hospital bed smile at one after another
All of them asking the same questions
As I contemplated the purpose of destinies
While she called it A New Experience
I stepped away from it, from her. It was impossible.

And when I took out my phone to grapple with
     the tomorrow, I looked
Beside her bed of nurses there was a monster
Just beyond the curtain it loomed with its gaping jaws
Sneering its crooked spindly silver teeth
Monitoring me with its cloud of black eyes, showing
     no signs of life
Entranced, I gazed back
Down its cold white empty pallet, through its rubbery intestines

Right into its vacant heartless void, without even a bed to
     cradle its victims
Bleached by the florescent lights, it was the darkest thing
     I'd ever seen
And it spoke to me
And devoured my loves and my sorrows and the memory
     of our sunrise
And it wanted her and it wanted me and everything we slept with
So I gave it to it...
......................Everything.

The morning after, we're eating with brilliant smiles at
     the refurbished diner
The End
or somewhere near...