Nobody knows what you must do
Not even the dogs who settle for crumbs know what you must do
Some benefit from your loss,
Others are left behind teddy bears
One cracks the edge of a wine glass with their teeth
Another plucks a lit cigarette from the mouth of an exile
One pilgrimages to graves to arrange their decay
Another forgets the name of a lover and cracks with joy
Nobody knows what you must do
Not even the dead, nor your heart, or your mother,
Not even God cares much about doing things
that aren’t breaking news
Somebody is laying down to die right now
Someone else is making love with a fatal wound
Another knows no one will ever find them there
Still none of them know what you must do
-
-
My princes,
My boyhood friends,
Do you still remember the sun sickness in the pit of our empty stomachs?The frozen vegetables cooling our wounds,
while we watched the final summer sunsets
outline our tree house kingdoms shadowing
bruised hips with a kiss of the headache cool water
fountain bubbling across our squinting.The crown now pulls stunning violence across my eyelids,
and the headmaster rips my palms
pouring diamonds into the orchestra pit
where a first chair violinist evaporates in the beams of the limelight.As curtains break, as crowds sigh,
an untied burning upwards smolders
roofs of an empty home against the midnight sky
where blood stuck hair and half closed eyes
tilt and wonder why there was no warning.A wound will always seem to find you,
an answer is coming,
like a voice calling from home,
when your feeling so far away. -
But green is the color of earth, of living things, of life. And of rot.
We deck our halls with it and dye our linens. But should it come creeping up the cobbles, we scrub it out, fast as we can. When it blooms beneath our skin, we bleed it out. And when we, together all, find that our reach has exceeded our grasp, we cut it down, we stamp it out, we spread ourselves atop it and smother it beneath our bellies, but it comes back. It does not dally, nor does it wait to plot or conspire. Pull it out by the roots one day and then next, there it is, creeping in around the edges.
Whilst we’re off looking for red, in comes green.
Red is the color of lust, but green is what lust leaves behind, in heart, in womb. Green is what is left when ardor fades, when passion dies, when we die, too. When you go, your footprints will fill with grass.
Moss shall cover your tombstone, and as the sun rises, green shall spread over all, in all its shades and hues.
This verdigris will overtake your swords and your coins and your battlements and, try as you might, all you hold dear will succumb to it.
Your skin, your bones. Your virtue.