When the Sun Bleeds

On evenings like tonight,
Words - fold their layered chiffon frills
Into neat tight buns, held together by a pin.
But then, as if at the count of 38 weeks -
Break into blossom.

Words, seizing uncontrollably,
Like an unimmunized infant -
With a soiled umbilical stump.

They have an old story to tell,
To an old windowed audience.
But in both the teller and the told -
Few faces have transformed.

In the crimson blush of a setting summer sun,
A woman gazed with deep, pitch black eyes.
They said she was thinking of a man.
Really? Can you think of a lover
with such apathy?
With eyes that cut you like flat black pearls -
Neither sorrow nor joy.
As if she had put the matter to rest,
Swallowed her aloneness in one virtuoso swig.

But then there were others,
many many more.
Who missed the rare moment,
When the shy summer sun,
Rained its red emotions
Bared the pink bruises on its own blundering heart.

Perhaps it wasn't apathy at all then.
She couldn't possibly dream of lost lovers...
The black-eyed woman -
Was too busy watching;
Watching in wounded wonder
As the summer sun bled,
Drop after drop
A deeper and thicker red
Until it sank, listlessly
In the vastness of its own blood
And died.

Oct 2nd, 2011.