formation of a black hole

who can quite say

when careless talk & confidence

slips into that other charged thing

so minimal at first

then nova explosions--

outer layers once held by gravity or

other stable Einsteinian equations, collapsed

inside to those dense brilliant colors

whose appearance you'd forgotten

completely but for the occasional misty

love lyric on the car stereo

driving down that quite ordinary

road of what passes for life sometimes

or fate if you really think about it

and the song fixes a blind thought whole

foolish yielded-to romantic images

of some damn forever love no one

for Christ's sake ever believes in

except maybe the too young to know better

or those who invented sentiment

to put you into obvious distraction

from the real itself, that lace-work of

gnostic myth and responsibilities

of no one's poetic daylight dreaming,

but then each lyric word a god or demon

set to disturb whatever outer or inner

peace you've never achieved anyway

 

and then she shows herself as memory

of arms you couldn't wait to fall into

your emptiness more lonely than the space between stars

breaking through your crumpling earth-solid crust,

your once predictably orbiting heart--

but not your heart actually because for so long

you'd given that over to fixed orbits

holding yourself against magnetic storms

of all unknown excitements

such as light-blue eyes

or just thinking about touch

until finally about nothing else

while you weave other worlds

or think they are weaving you--

and maybe they do--or because

the whole galaxy's nebula-bright

and you can't see anything, anything

except the terrible grasp

of this spiraling dark starbirth

 

which you draw toward you

knowing the singularity is your heart occurring,

moving toward some event horizon

close to the speed of miscalculation,

outer layers having pulled you

with their violent pressure's convulsing intensity--

sun-binding longing coming apart

so strong theoretically, this core temperature            

of your temporal life, collapsing

under its own infinite weight as if finally

disappearing from the visible universe

where not even light can escape

 

let alone you without her.