After

### After

Why do all the good men die?

 

Maybe by some holy mistake you made so much space around yourself

That a single misplaced bloodcell cracked you open like a rock through glass

Every micrometer of circumference a weight sufficient

To crush you

 

Sand is always churning downwards

Towards the center of the earth--

The home we all return to, when our desert is empty.

 

All the good men die--I did too.

But dying isn't so bad.

It's a chance to break the surface

Peel the skin away

Return as something slimmer,

Pearly, all knobs and wires and

Seared fresh new nerves.

A chance to cry out for help,

Food, water, food, help

 

All the good men die because

It's the dying that lets you live.

I couldn't shed the chains

But I could shed myself

And all the hooks sunk into that

Wretched outer skin.

 

Goddamn diabolical, the things

You taught the children:

It is not enough to be alive,

That being human is a privilege

Easily revoked at the strike of a hand

Rid of with an upturned hand.

 

Praises be to god, who granted you

Yourself, yet commanded

Hollow your heart with your own hands,

Pan through the fragments for gold,

For the spice of your organs, and discard

What lived within you.

Feed it to the priest.

 

Darling, don't you see how he's grinning?

Do you see the blood dripping

Down his chin?

 

Do you blame yourself for

Being young and impressionable?

For falling for it?

When you were told that there's a better you somewhere out there?

 

You scan the horizon, spinning round and round

Your eyes can't hold the whole world all at once so you turn

Spin apart

Lose what you had in the momentum.

 

 

So many people have died.

There aren't enough blades of grass nor

Buckets of dirt left in this scoured ground

To bury us all.

 

Maybe we can all just lie down

In the parking lot, side to side

Hands up to block the street lights and

Catch the stars.

 

Your absence is presence unto itself,

Where I can put more of the me

I was hiding.

 

I hope that you can share a bit of that

Hidden you with me, too.

We all deserve a little less loneliness,

 

And a lot more life.