The Sun God

“Why’s the sky filled with gloom?” - you would ask, looking up.
- Well, the god of the sun must be drunk at the pub:
He must have left Friday, dropped his keys in the drain,
Or while staggering back got caught up in the rain,

Or he climbed to the roof of the panel plateau
With no pleasant a sight but the wet, ugly snow,
Curled up under birds’ wings of expendable types,
Feasting on garbage and phlegm from the pipes.

“Why aren’t the clouds clearing out?” - you would ask.
- Oh, perhaps to the sun god its too tough of a task,
Or maybe he just doesn’t know what to wear
And is tired too much of the despondent stare

Which the mirror sends back inexplicably dull.
Maybe the sun god has entered a lull.
What are you to know? He wants nothing to do
With himself anymore at this time than with you.

So perhaps he deadbolted his doors for his good,
Unable to bear what for years he withstood,
But maybe, just maybe he’s hurting - that’s why
Only thunder and rain tumble down from the sky.

Or the god of the sun, his legs draped from the railing
Off his balcony, like lanky wisteria, wailing
In the thick, lumpy wind, all polluted and grey
Cried the miserable nights after nights away.

There, unglowing, unworshipped, unwound and uncrowned
The sun god eyed the distance from himself to the ground
With his eyes blankly set, weather-stained, blind and thin,
Bulging out like an unwritten letter through skin.

His hum a directionless, sleepwalking child,
That had vaguely - a dream’s hand - kept unreconciled
His unrequited vocations - the ancient, the new,
Painted around him the world a grey hue.

The god of the sun must be covered in cracks,
And his head must be hanging, resigned, like an axe;
And his hair must be drooping - a matted old rug
And his tears must taste bitter and dead like a drug.

If the sun god’s gold wings will fold onto themselves,
If, still vacantly dreaming, he will mutter farewells,
Then, my darling, just know that we will lose the sun
And the sky overhead will be over and done.