Coffin Dust

“Coffin Dust”

Where I once saw souls, I see only symbols.
I could read you like some ancient tome:
A book of some good, but mostly evils—
That I want under this skin that I call my home.

Don’t you know the disease that brought me here?
Don’t you know by now that it is more than fear
Of dying alone that drags me, crawling to your lust—
A sickness that paints me in my coffin dust?

On what canvas would we paint these flowers?
Would you illustrate the way my spirit cowers
At the ghosts of solitude that wait to haunt me
Beyond death if I am buried not beside thee?

They’re here—these spirits I cannot exercise
Of the same loneliness I see burdening your eyes.
But you, you are surrounded by a kinder destiny,
While I am doomed to the flowers of this gallery.

How shall we paint in the dust of death and decay
The silence—the sounds of all we could not say
As we faced each other in the darkness of our shame?
Our oaths in tatters; limited to but another frame?

If it kills me, I still will love you to the end.
The parting of one who might have been a friend.
Yes. That final portrait shall be a withdrawal,
But of course, it shall fade with them all

When we are laid in earth, victims of the air,
And only shadows await us there.
How shall we paint that darkness that will surround
When we are in silence forever below the ground?

Don’t you know you were my king,
And you were worth the suffering?
And as the worms about me shall feast,
I will be pleased that I was so diseased.

Today, I paint you as you were.
When I saw such souls in every picture.
I weep to know I paint such a lie
But still, I place a star in each auburn eye.

And that star tells me there is hope to hold,
That someday, ere we grow old,
You somehow may regain my trust,
And a new depiction we can make of the coffin dust.

© 2022 Marten Hoyle