Last Rites

I wrote once of Love because I believed we could
slay our demons one by one. In the after years  
of self birth and altered names, we never changed,  
simply realized spirits could actually dance.  
 
There will always be the yearning, the scar tissue
that forms over the chagrined thought achingly tender  
to the touch years after effects have worn off,
until one day another decade numbs the nerve.  
 
The bite grows less sharp, the pine needles brittle  
from time under olden steps; the cacao, now white, flaked
dryness down the throat; the ice burnt. But we  
do not die of bitterness in having become learnt.  
 
We have grown, you and I, into our separate gods
of work and more work, and money and wine that alters
the mind of things not to think about whenever it pours  
and we can't produce. This will be a good one, this poem.  
 
This is us in the world of us alone not together
with our money and work, riches and gods different
not the same. The wind runs strong pushing blood  
through the heart into a wildfire burning out the loins.  
 
This is a good one, this poem. This is us alone
not together where everything is art or everything
is not except for us, as individual as our individual
gods who are and always will be a single universe.  
 
This is a good one, this poem. This is us together alone  
through barriers of light we emanate. Listen: We die  
only when we fail to create. We die only when we  
fail to create. We die ONLY when we fail to create.  
 
This is the way a relationship ends
This is the way a relationship ends
This is the way a relationship ends  
An epitaph of blank canvas and page.  
 
~