The Lincoln Panels

Each squared panel giving off a light

That is shared by no other, light that is unique,

and yet similar merely in a sense of proximity.

Some are dimmed, some bright,

Some that are forever calling out into the darkness

For someone, or rather something

That it just cannot explain.

Is it a similarity that brings the eye,

An eerie congruence as if a subdivision,

The forced hand of the hierarchy that leaves

No room for the sole?

Does each prism contain its own crying mechanism,

Each its own ability to produce matter?

Did the cloning start long beforehand,

Or have you made it so,

With your squared configurations and absurd justifications?

How it shatters the heart to see the light burn out,

With all perplexity shoved aside

As there is surely no anger with the loss

Of one as inimitable as you.

For your beauty radiated like a thousand suns,

Burning the dense rubber into a tarnished fixation.

Something that draws the iris but not so much

The apparatus behind it all.

For the mind is unable to wrap itself

around such a thing as this. The departure

into a varied chasm, while I sit and await the return

of your generous beam. For it is my

life blood, my existence.

My God, what has it done to you?

To bring a form that was once full of vivacity

Into a sum of nothingness that could never have been thought upon.

For it was imagined impossible to see you hit the switch,

To watch as you escape into the darkness without me. 

Author's Note

I already posted this one as a stand alone poem, but would love to hear your thoughts in relation to its place in the work as a whole.