in moonlight—dead

Beneath the pendulum’s dull kiss,
where lamplight gutters, thick with piss,
I split the bone—oh, sweet dissever!—
and watched the marrow twitch forever.

A sacrament of rust and rot,
the cleaver’s hymn, the flesh’s knot—
each sinew hummed a psalm unblessed,
each spurt of seed a dark confess’d.

The floorboards drank what I let fall,
the walls leaned close to catch it all.
And when the last convulsion fled,
I washed my hands in moonlight—dead.

Yet still, the stain! The stain remains,
not blood, nor milk, nor winter rains,
but something older, something wet,
that whispers this is not done yet.

It clings where soap and scrubbing fail,
a viscous tale without a scale.
It creeps, a breathing, blanching mould,
through keyhole, crack, and patch of cold.

I see it in the glass at dawn,
a spectral film where I’ve yawned—
it leaves a trace upon the pane
like some cadaverous, sweet stain.

The walls now bleed a quieter ichor,
and every shadow holds its liquor.
The cleaver rests, yet in my sleep,
I feel its hilt begin to creep.

It is not on my flesh, ’tis in—
a sin that drills beneath the skin.
No sacrament nor alms can mend;
this is the lover I must tend.

For what was spilt upon the boards
has taken root in all my words,
and every thought, however clean,
grows thick with what I once have been.

So let the pendulum swing low,
and let the sallow lanterns glow.
The work is done, the form is spent—
yet still, the stain iscontinent.

It is the ghost within the clay,
the price I pay for yesterday.
And in the next and final breath,
’twill be the harbinger of death.

For what is done, is ne’er complete;
the stain and I, in darkness, meet.
And when at last the stars go dim,
’tis not my hands—but they—that are in Him.