And the whisper is the sort you'd love to dream, love to believe

But cannot because it shines as vainly false as a golden calf,

Glittering and pure, yet impure at the same time.

Pearls will shine when they tell you that you're beautiful,

Or their tears will flow when they impart their love

And cry for a life to share,

Yet emptiness is the only creed for you to follow

When you turn away, for in the shadow of your back

(Not the blinding small, the shadow)

Their minds will change and you'll be left to wonder

What the lure was to make them bother at all.

You have no beauty of your own, save the gold dripping from your body

And your surgically altered face

Because your soul is empty and borrowed;

Grace within you is not inherent but purchased,

And you've sold yourself for everything that you have.

So small wonder that you sneer when they say "I love you"

Or that it wasn't just a one night thing.

Not so incredible that you've given up listening

When they tell you "I'm sorry" or ask to give it another go.

The only thing to make you smile is the calf

That you could hold in your arms and polish,

And it will lie and say "I need you", and that

And only that is what you'll believe,

Because somewhere, buried like an abscess in the hierarchy of your fears,

The need for something different, something other, unnamable, lunges upwards

And bares its empty face for a smile,

Luring you into the falsest of banalities,

But I suppose that's the lesser of two evils:

Better to love yourself with a lie than to know no love at all.

And it's sad, isn't it, that the enamor which held you

Was only golden to the sight;

For all preciousness is cold to the touch

And you are the model of frigidity.

Sadder still all these nights when you'd grown nauseous from tears,

Screaming for the death of your heart--

Watching the saline wetness drench the falsest of idols,

Your little calf, who could never answer you,

Who would never even give a single word that might betray the truth

(If it could)

That the something you were looking for was always within reach,

Only it wasn't clothed in ropes of diamond-cut eternity

Or in rings and bracelets and watches that will outlast you,

But in flesh and spirit containing arms-

(the only thing to hold you of its own volition)

The only thing that could form words of its own accord and say

"I need you, I've always needed you, but you let the hurt turn you away".

And that's where the folly of your life lies,

The knife pitched from the hoof of your idol

Which strikes the small of your back

And severs the cord of emotion, blinding you

To the vanity of your ways:

That you have shone falsely with no glimmer in your eyes at all,

Glittering only with golden wrists and hands

That no one will ever dare to touch-

Their beauty far too unique to hold,

The immensity of the preciousness too austere to caress;

With your chest heaving still, and pawing the ground,

You'll never believe it.