Gargoyle

In dusk’s leather sheet, curtains
draw close and closer against a solar
explosion, an atom burst song ringing
through the skyscraper sprawl, its
spine like the corpse hand of a witch,
darkness sewn together by lightning,
the stitch of thunderclaps like bodies
falling on the world’s largest bass drum
while the towers’ breathing gargoyles
grow impatient, their teeth rotting
from the inside out, their wings
turning to tissue paper, to cluttered wax
that will fail their flight on the first attempt
to snatch you up,
limping off mid-air with only a lock of hair,
an iron-seed tear drops not from empathy
but from the inability to rip you apart
when they had the chance.