The Loser

Your back a refraction 
of your face -
no testament of me.

You took it all, but then
I gave too much, 
was too free.

And you, poor you, did not know 
how to handle such gifts.
Delicately.

You thought you walked 
to life and light 
but I watched you

lengthen and heighten
to a brown gloom, to a closing down 
to diffuse, uncertain.

I was your place of light -
bright, open, green,
a living abstraction

you turned from, gridding yourself
down to humming rooms
of computer-temperature extremes,

reducing your life to cool planes
of prism, facile angles,
all-steel surfaces and words of glass.

Out here, at liberty, I breathe fresh air.
The sun shines and I catch its steady rays
in my hand

whilst I sorrow at you:
man all planned and thorough
in your own undoing.

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