I have felt more dead than I’ve ever been
Half alive and roses
Five rows and a casket
Cracked open slightly
By a jagged thing
Sloughing velvet
The color of my rouge

Underneath
I have watched miles of countless scenery
And the grey and scrubbed tracks of Men
Making their way
Down the highways that never got them there

Disapproval
Disappointment shoveled onto their laps
Like the burden of children
It’s all in a life.. ..

It is all in a life

When Golden Years
Are shed like tears
And tattooed blue ink to cheeks
Once pink with promise

Salty trails of permanence

Adhere and there..
Here and there,
But what’s in a life but death?
What’s in a death but a life un-lived .. ?

I ask
And raise the lid to look
Peek for the answers that might break my heart
A scattered skeleton ... to the floor
The bones that cradle my flesh inside
So that I might hide
From the discomfort of it

I might hide from the comfort of it..

My tongue caresses the inside of my jaw
To beg a gape and awe..
to urge a childlike response to the world
Not to encourage
A brutal and courageous faith..
but one that is innate and infallible

The seed that caused the first instrument to blow
And charcoaled the walks of the Neanderthal
(Or more appropriate name for that human)
But being all the same..
and became Man kind as his spiritual need met the need to survive
And it shown on his face like grace