John FitzGerald

The Creator

This may be my last emotion.

But shall I introduce the light, and make it plain?

It grows sacred, fanning itself for a breath.

 

I have told you of the pain,

how it needs us to exist

and is the cause of all we do.

 

Appease pain or die is the very first rule.

How like a steel river, it still moves,

so one can only brush against it,

 

to merely sip from its life and find beauty.

What a ponderous dream to be bearing a soul.

You throwback from an outcry, wonder. 

 

What blessed Messiah? Christen this.

Come through or don’t wake me up again.

You’re it. Oh, and pain’s passionate, baby,

 

grows genius in flicking to liquid the stone,

pounds like teeth into musk and grinds the bone

until we’re swollen from the hole and kept alive.

 

See? Pain knows, is of infinite patience and degree.

The natural man has little hope but to fear forever.

The Lord of feeling is the poet who does me in. 

 

God, I ache because of you, and still want more.

But I can’t stand it.

There goes my last emotion, burning out.

 

 


“The Creator” is from Telling Time by the Shadows (Turning Point, 2008).