I walk between life and death,
The hours when the days are like
Stakes to the nocturnal heart.
   And I know a walk among tombstones
Is a like a fresh death when the earth
Is covered with scarlet and scenic
Flowers,
    I can already write my death on
The slab as clearly as I see the onset
Of the dusk upon my sun.
   And I know to be dead is but another
Interminable word,
   Like the carnival rides of my childhood,
Lost in a crowd but thrillingly unknown.
   Tonight the stars speak a hope
In a new year, and all the years disappear like
Geese to the North,
   Like Gnarls of teeth locked in a mongrels
Cry behind enclosed yards.
     I am ready to die,
But instead I will write death and
Write a verse to make one think
One knows the true beauty of life,
    Like the insufferably brilliant
Deaths of heroes told in myth
And legend,
    A dissolved illusion to the real illustration
Caught between worlds of perceptions.
     I see death on a dance floor,
A psalm sung and written by me
As my soul whirls the words in spectral
Atoms and lost in the momentary
Eternity.
       And I remember I'm a just a man
With Latin blood spitting
From the womb of my mother.
    And I am on the same side as my heart,
The hourglass fades,
The brutal eyes of truth facing me,
Fierce and unredeeming,
I dance with death,
And there is nothing I can do now.
I have nothing to prove I was here,
Except the poem
And even the words will fade.
Except the song I wrote for death,
It plays over and over
And death dances eternal.