Amongst the living,
There are throngs of walking dead
Attempting to wake.

Alive enough to move, but
Not enough to know they’re not.

The students disperse
From long halls lined with classrooms,
Like deer from the corn.

Each fearful of what’s to come,
The mystery of the night.

The clouds, high above
The cold, dark, midnight skyline,
Are full of questions.

Quickly falling into me,
The conundrum of the age.

Landing on my ears,
Caught like rain in a tin roof
On the mountain’s edge.

Je vois le réponse juste,
Mais je ne la comprends pas.

I must understand,
I must know what I cannot,
My Etruscan scrolls.

All the last literature,
Now just embers in the pit.

All of the paintings,
Thrown off their walls to the floor,
Destroyed by soil.

All of their men, deceased.
All of their boys are just boys.

However, in time,
The boys will grow into men
As the sun smolders.

Spinning madly in its place,
Until that final moment.

When time stops ticking
And the cosmos wont expand,
A last kiss goodbye.

Calm and collected, we stand
Staring into the barrel.

Calm and collected,
I must be kidding myself.
Is this collected?

Already segregated
As if the show has ended.

As if we’ve already
Been scorched by solar winds,
Left for dead by friends.

My lips,
Listless letters without ledgers
Lie—
Loom—
Languish in light of eyes
That hang like Neptune,
Or fall like the Moon
Away.
Still, I remember
The yellow dogwood blossoms,
And what they told us.
Years later we died
Separately, together,
As drops in puddles.
Jupiter followed,
Dipping beneath the Sun’s light
With nothing but fear,
And Cytherea,
Boiling beneath her mask,
Fell into Hermes
While our children watched
With horror from their homes...
And Olympos sank into the sky.

Did you notice the painted trillium—
The way it freckled the dark sky
Or the hills below the Sassafras summit?
Scarcely scattered beneath the pines,
The blossoms live and die like love,
Or maybe not.
Perhaps the petals live like I’ve imagined after they die,
Boutonnieres pinned to the night’s blue blazer.
But even if they don’t, I envy the way they live
Their lives without wondering whether
Or not they might dream.

Our clothes fed the sweet pinesap,
Rotting with our minds on the forest floor
That night beneath the Lenten moon,
And the cold draped our bodies
In a film of sweat as thick as the sound
Of the falls flooding the valley.
Winter’s fear saturated our bivy’s fly
As Spring drew near, but still we slept.

Your pupils danced behind my eyelids
And God shook his head in disgust
While we sipped silver steins replenished from Lethe,
But only angels died that night in Elysium.

An hour passed beneath the willow
Before we saw the sallow light,
It slipped and slid between the depths
Of dusk and clouds that own the night.
Still we sat, watching streams
That danced above the atmosphere
Where gravity begins to fade
Along with most of future’s fears
And still we sit and wonder why
We gild the lilies on the shore,
And still we sit and wonder why
We can’t say what we’re waiting for.