What is happiness worth to one who only sees

the subtle derision in every smile?

Or in life-

quick

stolen moments, dulled by an artificial glow.

What a brilliant play life sometimes dreams,

in which the burden of being can be satiated

with epiphanic measures-

like plucking a single photon from the sunset.

But here you are deceived-

full of Athens and warm electric nights,

pleasures to give each experience a value.

All for which we reduce ourselves to writhing forms-

hungry mouths meeting in a venomous exchange of lust-

I fathered the dawn.

For what pleasure can one seek in

the company of desire-

while desire haunts the reverberation

whose final beat to be realized

fades into the rhythm of a child tracing the contours of your ear.

—-Jonathan Renfield