Track 12
Sunrise Elegy
Written and Performed By Aberjhani

I saw a sunrise bow in greeting before my brother.
The waning moon of his gaze focused
beyond the weeping and wailing of stars
falling like civilizations through my heart.
And the myriad insulting meanings of life
played upon his face like the spirits
of things I have never understood.

Out of the early morning light came
three slender beams of gold, and ruby and white
stepping through the window beside his bed
and taking upon themselves the forms
of something not quite human, not quite godly.
They exuded that brilliance barely suggested
in the paintings of this world’s masters
and by their light I stared at the
hieroglyphic lesions upon my brother’s face.

Within their empathetic glow shined the
side of my brother’s life I’d never allowed myself to see.
I saw in their arms ready to attend his trembling
the hands of lovers and strangers he had known
and I felt in their compassion his constant
struggle to differentiate between the two.

On how many mornings did you compromise
your flesh, in the absence of another’s
true affection? When? And how? And why
did your need for love become so expensive
that nothing less than your life
could pay its cold exorbitant price?

These creatures made of starbreath
and visions must have seen you
in those moments that stood like walls
of alien genetics between your life and mine.
They knew what you were like, vibrating
your entire universe against the skin and tears
of another, slowly crushing your skull
between planets of intolerance and desire.
And yet they do not hesitate lifting
your sleeping soul into their embrace
the way I always did before speaking
your name, or the way I do now––watching––
the inexplicable terror of my grief
staining your passionless eyes.

I saw a sunrise take my brother into its arms
and spread his colors across the sky, burning like butterflies
from one end of the wailing horizon to the other.

© Copyright Aberjhani