TEARS
IN RAIN
(EXTENDED CUT)

After Roy Batty

I've seen things you

people wouldn't believe.

Attack ships on fire

off the shoulder of Orion.

I watched C-beams

glitter in the dark

near the Tannhäuser

Gate and Vega get born.

Burned on my retinae

are the Pillars of Creation,

spreading in their nebula

like Chanel 5

from an atomizer, and

Doja Cat, her skin

cerulean, lap dancing

in space. If I could feel

love, I felt it then, swear

I felt it then. I seethed

below the supermoon's

naked circumference,

wafer reflecting a blue

sun like some bio-

engineered hyacinth

and I sought my maker

in its face, sensing I

too shone another's light.

I drove comets in their

ellipses like cosmic Bel-Airs,

E-brake drifting the

hairpin around Earth,

hoping adrenaline

may mean permanence.

I watched the shards

of stars, decimated

in Lucifer's exodus

encircle Saturn.

Neptune in retrograde

weeping like a daphne

Stratocaster. Sadness,

she sang to me, is how

your heart proves it's

real, and I hurt believing her.

I met the event horizon,

felt my irises dilate

involuntarily, blushed

at the touch of the

Great Annihilator. Out

of infinity's O-gaping

mouth came SHADOW

like an Italo pop song

and I saw oblivescence,

memory's unmaking

in the deep. My first kiss

forgotten, boyhood gone,

individual soul liquified

in an astral still and shot

like vodka by the void.

I felt then it was less

life more death that

made me human. At the

very edge, in the perfect

black I beheld Omega

glowing like a Coca-

Cola sign: a neon dove,

hovering in great

and terrible silence.

I touched it, took

it in my hand, held

it until I sat where

you see me, soaked

and steaming in

this downpour of pure

lamentation—the

only thing left to do

is let it go. And all

these moments will be lost

in time. Like tears

in rain...