Darling, breath-breaking words,

Forgive me, but what does it mean to live? 
            consumed by a flickering fire tying the gray of smoke to ash
            with a song of crackling hisses and touch like dizzied wrath
Or burn? 
            firecracker laughter eroding smile lines onto the young face
            with the confidence of a perennial lover, caressing, holding
Or grieve? 
            welcomed into the pit of water, falling and fading, molasses
            dripping into itself, heavy and sweet and teethed and gone
Or drown? 
            memories lodged between the throat and world, a spinning
            reality taking its tax, the reminder of the old, indelible debt
Or think?
            a wild thing, hitting the clear window pane then the sponge
            of the skull, looping, a boar, crashing into glass and brain

Forgive me, but I think we’ve used you too liberally.
            metaphors employed like maids, stanzas split for aesthetics,
            and sentiments dashed to hurling, whirling desensitization
Oh, to live, to burn, to grieve, to drown!
            to think, magnificent, breathing in the weight of the written,
            ink against the blinking cursor, mechanical clatter, the rasp
You give so much with your every appendage.
            sans readers, writers, or dreamers, the beauty is sans eyes,
            shape over sound and the novel gleam above the gleaning

Forgive me.
            we, the discombobulated, will die as dust but you will endure,
            you, the facts, confessions, laws, lists, orders, stories, truth

Yours,
a Poet