my illuminished star

my eyes slurred, now I see you, illuminished star, now I don’t -

I savour your corrosive cadavers scattered in the penumbra,

I am cloistered calendula, encrusting embellishment of crustacean cyst,

cloud-seam rent apart of wholeness, nub of deadened

frusta, you have changed my eye-horizon, dismantled

tall towers clothed in ore-rust, where I crouched, pensive,

never conceived abseiling into detritus –

I am echo lost in an empty mirror --
tell me my unseen illuminite, why --

my fingers rent the sky-curtain, to glimpse a vestige of you

I watch my hidden footprint rise, only to humble,

my limbs crotching the igneous stone, straining, chafing,

you have forborne my years of venerations,

now I cling with broken clutch

at faint illuminations of you -

you, convolute me, fetish me, faminish me,

my illuminished star --

-by Rita Putatunda