By Terry Wayne L.    terry39@juno.com
Date: 30 April 2000

Tasting Crimson

Tasting Crimson

I feel a tear tracking down my cheek now
And reach out to taste the salty bitterness
Only to see I was wrong
Tears are for weaker men, in weaker moments.

I stare at my finger transfixed at the color
of a crimson drop of blood
That reflects the pain and fear of this moment;
An omen of my past, portent of future savage nights.

I smell the bright cooper odor of soma opened
And feel the spiritual release of contaminated memories
Flowing from a wound cauterized by a flawed heart
Wishing that sweet, deep darkness could envelope the night.

And I taste the crimson tear clinging there
To remind myself of the sweet purity of salvation
And the beauty of redeemed lives
But mainly to taste the color of crimson.

And to know that crimson is the color of my dreams
The color of my heart
The color of love and pain and hate,
The color of my tears in the night.

Terry Wayne L.
April, 2000