On Dying

Distance

Spill from me
The soul of you;
Oh dying stare
As your children
Leave your side,
What drinks you drink,
What things you think,
And what maturity,
As your children leave,
You alone concede,
Alone, alone, alone,
Again, you say, to sleep.

.

Inside

In her pinkish pool,
Amanda looked more alive than ever
And in her mother’s face was death,
Her father (so proud) did not cry,
As if he’d seen it all before,

So strange the luxury,
Of living between the here and there,
And in a way we all are dead,
Her parents living on this side
Of the dark, dark door.

.

For What Life Might Be

The light leaves the room,
A soul lost to darkness,
A son murders his father,
A girl gives birth to a son,
A man takes a girl,
A mother beats a man,
A husband drinks with a mother,
A life is given to a husband,
To a mother, and a man,
A girl, a son, another father,
A life to all. A fair, fair life.
But the light leaves the room.

.

Composition VII

Shapes fell and formed a face,
None which nature could so arrange.

.

To Live

I don’t fear dying, I fear not having lived. What dreams may come will come, or if they be nothings, then the emptinesses must in the end suffice. Yet when I, at some far and future date, begin to die, when I know this, what will I say about today? It is likely nothing. And still, there are certain days where any sane man would have gone back to the war just to escape them, or given up a year just to relive them. The fiery arrows and crimson flushes of our lives live on into our retirement. Those singular moments must, when the time calls, fill the forgotten today’s. I will not have lived, but I will have lived. I hope.