The Walk of Being

I have felt more dead than I’ve ever been
Half alive and roses  
Five rows and a casket  
Cracked open slightly    
By a jagged thing  
Sloughing velvet    
The color of my rouge  
   
Underneath  
I have watched miles of countless scenery  
And the grey and scrubbed tracks of Men  
Making their way  
Down the highways that never got them there    
   
Disapproval    
Disappointment shoveled onto their laps    
Like the burden of children  
It’s all in a life.. ..    
   
It is all in a life    
   
When Golden Years    
Are shed like tears    
And tattooed blue ink to cheeks    
Once pink with promise    
   
Salty trails of permanence    
   
Adhere and there..    
Here and there,    
But what’s in a life but death?    
What’s in a death but a life un-lived .. ?  
   
I ask    
And raise the lid to look    
Peek for the answers that might break my heart  
A scattered skeleton   ... to the floor    
The bones that cradle my flesh inside    
So that I might hide    
From the discomfort of it  
   
I might hide from the comfort of it..    
   
My tongue caresses the inside of my jaw  
To beg a gape and awe..    
to urge a childlike response to the world    
Not to encourage    
A brutal and courageous faith..    
but one that is innate and infallible    
   
The seed that caused the first instrument to blow    
And charcoaled the walks of the Neanderthal    
(Or more appropriate name for that human)   But being all the same..    
and became Mankind as his spiritual need met the need to survive    
And it shown on his face like grace