The flame has softer fingers,
Than petals from a flower,
And it's memory is less
For every hour that it burns,
And the flower isn't jealous,
Of whomever enjoys it's beauty;
While the fire consumes most anything,
And none of it is spurned.

But flowers know almost nothing,
Of how a flame gets started;
And a fire knows even less
Of how a flower grew
Still, they have a slight respect,
In regarding, each the other;
As if each had certain knowledge
Flames and flowers are too few.

So there's a lesson for us,
If we care to pay attention
To living forests forming
Their own funeral pyres:
As the flame hates not rare beauty.
And the flower's not faint-hearted;
If you've never yet been burned:
You don't have to fear the fire.

Waltz me across the universe
Dance me through time-
Ring the bells: I’m alive
By accident or design.

The offspring of broken symmetry
Or a miracle, sight unseen-
Not the same world would it be
If I had never been.

Waltz me across the universe
Dance me through time-
Once I lived in a star’s eyes
But now my own light shines.

Welcome, to your long dying-
Unsaid words, empty gestures
The substance you always searched for
Was never real, and you discover
We will all be dying alone
Of grief, of the faux, negligible existence
Everything taken away at the end
Dark holocaust swallow us whole
And strangle the last sound we make
Welcome, to nights of tremulous tears
Inside the winding cloth you've made:
The teeming brain's multiforme emotions
The day you were born, an empty place was created also
You were never too rare or special to die
The train whistle announces you've been left behind
To contemplate your impersonal end
We are clothed of the same dust
All arrows point in the same direction
Both the high and low road are a mobius strip
Eternal life, but a dream of dimensional matter
Held for a short time in *******-
Time on any scale is nearly invisible to us
Welcome, to your long dying
Which is but the first breath of non-existence.

Graveyard cherubs look so cold,
Immune to cries of sadness; fear,
But there are reliquary angels,
And old paintings, that wept real tears.

You plant your loved one
Like a tree, and never look back ever again;
But sing the songs and fight the battles,
Unearthly wars, of virtue; sin.

You do your time until it's done,
And then they'll come, to bare your bones,
Unto that crypt, with impassive angels;
And say with grief, that you are home.

We all come in naked, alone
Kicking our cherub feet
Eyes taking it all in
We seem to fall so far from heaven
Like solitary stars
One by one
As we grow up into our own fledgling orbits.

Life lived like paupers
Straining for food, and liberty
Each of us limited by aloofness,
Chains we face, every direction
Innocence fled farther away
As the heavens nightly blaze
In their eternal dance,
Invisible beyond self-enclosing walls.

We leave all alone
Still naked beneath the sheets
Eyes frozen in their last frame
We hope to be arriving soon at heaven's door
Like smoking incense must go upward
But nobody can make us any promises
From the chaos here.

Every man, on his own trajectory
Each his own hard-bitten tragedy
Nothing promised, nothing gained
Till we circle untold worlds, again.

Your trailing starlight woven with silver needles
Enters the mundane life of human days;
And magical tongue recounts miracles uncounted,
In magnitudes of unexpected ways.

Your vision never balks at walls or ceilings;
An artist's heart is not like other things,
The words like hope in slowly burning censors
Take to the sky, once given freedom's wings.

Silent are the rocks;
Silent the alleys and stone walls,
Cracked foundations and fountains.
No voices speak now, except through the wind
Twisting and turning, on its way through the gorges.
The weather has beaten out every surface,
Stamped it's stalagmite of time upon the faces.
The last rags of clothing hung out to dry
Are a sifting, unrecognizable ash of piled up molecules,
Indiscernible from the storm-strewn cadavers
Of wood, straw and leaves,
Leaves which can laugh at the ferocity of sudden gales
And chatter annoying, behind lifting fingers of twig,
Themselves tumbled shamelessly, into ancient doorways
That once were closed against all intruders.

The cipher of their blood has marked, defined this place,
Pressed it down, with the missing weight of forgotten culture,
Though their language is still indistinguishable from others,
But that their slivered bones have stopped up the pilfering,
The plundering of tombs by wild running waters,
Trickling down to the lowest graveled catacombs
Of a once vibrant village;
It is all running spaces of tomb now,
And the few visitors that happen to wander in
Find themselves holding their breath,
Wary of their modern dissonance
Disturbing the invisible residents of past days.