You left
a white lighter
on your coffee table

so that when
we'd go back
to collect your things

from a crime scene
we had been to
countless times,

we'd know that
you died
thinking yourself

a King of Rock and Roll.

But really
you were
the prince

heir to
all the love
dad had to give,

bestowed upon
year after year
with the kind of too much faith

that only
parents
can give.

You heard
their lessons
about the world

being your oyster

but never payed
attention
to how to care

for
your
people.

You were
always
about the show,

You'd give all
the glitz
and glamour

off of your very own crown

thinking that
if love didn't sparkle
people wouldn't know it was

there.

But then
someone gave you
purple-hazed glasses

and suddenly
the world was
love in your pupils,

they flooded
your irises
with a shine

to which no amount of
family jewels
could compare.

Your eyes
had seen
radiance

and all you had
to go back to
was flaw

you saw
a life
that was hard

and surprisingly heavy
for being so
empty,

And you just
kept chasing
the smooth blues

that would never hurt your ears

or play you
the old song
of wasted potential.

Even as you wandered
popping and
repopping your ears,

our love was
dull to your
rock and roll lifestyle.

I know how much
you missed how it
was before

you got discovered by it,

eager and seething
to sink its hooks
into another good one.

Instead of
writing your own
song,

you faded
into the old
one.

And now,
I've lost word and
lyric,

melody is
ash
in my pen

because the music
wasn't in me,
dude,

it was in you.

And now the record
keeps playing
through the air,

but none
of us
want to hear it.

When you went,
you left us with
a ****** white lighter

and you took the music with you.