The Very End

The sky isn’t always blue.
Sometimes it bleeds orange, or red with shame.
The moon is not always white,
but marooned in haze—
an infant blinking toward too much light,
shrinking from a mother’s silhouette.

Kings don’t always stand bright and grand.
Sometimes they crawl, bellies scraped by stone,
blood caked to their palms,
shrapnel freckling them where suffering lands hardest.

Who guaranteed sunrise?
The beetle cracks, spine to carbon,
fuel for the last clatter of flame
that washes over us like
water not always wet.

Satellites dim, flat against the ruined sky.
Static above shuts off when God clicks the remote.
Each prophet kneels in the dark, proved wrong.
Their books are nothing but faded sap and machine-oil,
pages thinner than their faith.

What is truth now?
Things don’t circle back, don’t bloom again,
at least not forever.
Even the thirst runs dry,
when archetypes become hollow goblets,
Theseus stumbling desperate in the labyrinth,
string tied to no exit, no monster,
just a dead end.

Jesus offstage, slips and falls— no rescue.
as saint and sinner take their bows.
Stage lights off, curtains drawn,
no applause, no chorus.
The emptiness proves the verdict.

So,
when the hunger ends
and the spark gutters,
bells swing only silence.
What remains?

Every prayer, every poem,
and each hope a check that bounced.

And in this gray hour,
stripped and uncolored,
I remember:

Of all the things that unravel:
sky, moon, histories that failed—
It was love that kept its bend.
That, at least, was always only; love—
mine and true, until the very end.