Beyond the cold bounds of the last station
you find yourself alone with what came
of your choices / the prayer you make
again / (or were you always) / on your knees
/ to be relieved of a burdened conscience
/ lighter better kinder / follows the realization
that it would always come to this
that the house of your hidden enemies
would always be populated with shadows
that spend their dark hours contemplating
how best to keep you silent and sorry
	so you know / you brought this on yourself
/ far and away and after the words lose
their meaning and the spark of intimacy
fizzles into farce and what remains 
is the rolling record of your disappointment
/ you only know you’ve tried and failed and now
could I have done more or or or was I just
the child of slaves signed away by the invisible
hand of the one who’d eat his sons
and sigh out their bones
	so you know / you’ve always known
/ a truth heavy as stone / that you were born
under the weight of this fathering shade
predestined to be last and cast to labor 
without freedom or joy as the world
/ if it sees you at all / considers clever
whatever means to displace you
even as you are celebrated and more
in castigation / constant and cruel
and the measure of your mid life
envied and pitied in equal measure
	/ what a joke / whatever that force
loud approaching like a plague
of locusts behind you / before you
a brushfire / that cannot be 
reasoned away / no magic withstanding
against it / as it pulls you into its orbit
/ and will not be stopped / it cannot be