You're mad like a poet
Screaming at the world
At the top of your
Coal powdered lungs and
Mouth painted blood red
As if trying to yell
"Listen! Listen up!
Listen to me now!
I've got many things
To say! Many things!"
But they ignore you
And your late sleepless
Nights on a desk, ink
Dragging down your arm,
Spread up on papers
And decorating
The room in crumpled
Piles of lined papers,
Are wasted away.
It's sad, little friend,
And I wish you best
And not the poets fate,
And the cancerous days
That come with such things.
Live a life that's not
The poets and scream like
Anybody else
Just not him, not her.

cigarette lungs,
decaying with every heavy breath.
"i don't smoke to enjoy it. i smoke to die" you once said.
i remembered it as i watched the dirt cover your face and enter your lungs.
you met death and he accepted you with open arms,
cold hands,
and a hungry soul.
you didn't ask me much,
but you told me every time you wanted to jump in front of a car,
and you held my hand knowing that if you did it i'd be going too.
you never wanted me to die,
but you knew i began decaying like you,
slowly and painfully,
until my mind had burnt a painful hole in my chest.
as though someone had burnt out their cigarette using my confidence.
i shook with the same pain,
wanting to die but wanting to live a little more.

you pinned the dead butterflies and hung them in frames in your bedroom.
you told me you wished you could look beautiful when you died.
you knew that the grave you would end up in would be full of maggots and forgetfulness.
no one would remember the makeup you laboriously put on every day to look alive.
"no one will remember us" you told me.
you held my hand and told me to jump but my hand slipped.
i wanted to die,
but i wanted to live.
i was terrified of dying and you knew it.
you looked back with pain.
the rocks welcomed your pale body and i was left on the mountain that hovered above your unfriendly graveyard.

the morning of your funeral i remembered black.
i remembered black was your favorite color and you would be looking forward to swimming in a large space of black nothingness.
you told me you hoped you'd see stars and watch them burn while you floated around in nothing.

i didn't know what to say.
but the night sky makes me think of you and i like to think that you're sitting on some star watching it die the same way i watched you die.

My generation
has been taught
to hate the hero
and cheer on the villain
but maybe we were just given
the wrong heroes...