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.
Louis Steven
