The Sycophancy of Absence

no, you cannot think
solitude is your friend,
look at her stretched on your bed,
a powdered courtesan with melting eyes,
worshipping at the altar of your gangrenous wounds,
serving pleasure and pain at your slightest whim,
she is fan and foe and fork-tongued destiny,
autumn leaf and snowflake and variegated sun,
why yearn for the spring of togetherness,
for a master, for a bloom,
for a promise of a moon that cannot survive the night,
when you can conjure in her scented breath,
the sycophancy of absence,
the servitude of aloneness,
what travesty can you divine,
in the soliloquy of the single,
in the homily of the harlot,
no, no, you cannot think,
that love is a fair friend,
that forever is the waiting beloved
with the enigmatic smile,
reach for the emptiness by your pillow,
feel her beating heart,
she is the enslaved soul of want,
she is the paramour of the moment,
she is what you lost
and what you have found again,
no, solitude is not your friend.