Muhammad Ali died on the third.
Kimbo Slice died yesterday.*

    If one thing is now clear, it's that life doesn't appreciate those who are strong enough to fight back.

Once when I was young,* I was told you could swing so high you'd be able to just *fly away.  

   I learned early on
               That not everything we're told is true
               The fantastical can sometimes amount to a pile of plastic bags scattered in the wind
                    The end isn't always happy and there's not always closure
      Punctuations are more often question marks than definitive periods
                And looking for a definite explanation took prevalence over allowing our imaginations to fill in the blanks.
         Play time was replaced with study time,
             And before we knew it, it was time for work
                      We strayed from the playgrounds of our youth,
      Never returning to the top of the slide, we'd hit the ground a bit too hard to keep the enchantment of seemingly endless possibilities going
                                              Carriages became pumpkins long before midnight,
              And the school bell rang before we could finish our fun
                       But to tell the truth, sometimes,
     When everyone else has gone inside, back to the real world, full of logic and banalities,
         I sit on the old swingset kicking my feet
    Hoping it will let me *soar

How do I keep tripping
Over something that is
So far behind me?

Let the bird of loudest lay
  On the sole Arabian tree,
  Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.

But thou shrieking harbinger,
  Foul precurrer of the fiend,
  Augur of the fever’s end,
To this troop come thou not near.

From this session interdict
  Every fowl of tyrant wing
  Save the eagle, feather’d king:
Keep the obsequy so strict.

Let the priest in surplice white
  That defunctive music can,
  Be the death-divining swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right.

And thou, treble-dated crow,
  That thy sable gender mak’st
  With the breath thou giv’st and tak’st,
‘Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.

Here the anthem doth commence:—
  Love and constancy is dead;
  Phoenix and the turtle fled
In a mutual flame from hence.

So they loved, as love in twain
  Had the essence but in one;
  Two distincts, division none;
Number there in love was slain.

Hearts remote, yet not asunder;
  Distance, and no space was seen
  ‘Twixt the turtle and his queen:
But in them it were a wonder.

So between them love did shine,
  That the turtle saw his right
  Flaming in the phoenix’ sight;
Either was the other’s mine.

Property was thus appall’d,
  That the self was not the same;
  Single nature’s double name
Neither two nor one was call’d.

Reason, in itself confounded,
  Saw division grow together;
  To themselves yet either neither;
Simple were so well compounded,

That it cried, ‘How true a twain
  Seemeth this concordant one!
  Love hath reason, reason none
If what parts can so remain.’

Whereupon it made this threne
  To the phoenix and the dove,
  Co-supremes and stars of love,
As chorus to their tragic scene.

          THRENOS

Beauty, truth, and rarity,
Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclosed in cinders lie.

Death is now the phoenix’ nest;
And the turtle’s loyal breast
To eternity doth rest,

Leaving no posterity:
’Twas not their infirmity,
It was married chastity.

Truth may seem, but cannot be;
Beauty brag, but ’tis not she;
Truth and beauty buried be.

To this urn let those repair
That are either true or fair;
For these dead birds sigh a prayer.