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