Not to want another life

when the panic around this one

accepts all the beauty of defeat,

its little possibilities tethered

like plastic bags to a dying maple

trembling under the gaze of

an army of chainsaws.

I am called to success

by minds smaller than the

dust that clings to dust.

I thrive on being a slave to a gravity that

doesn’t weigh on it,

cannot find his brother in the wind,

blindly throws a dead leaf

onto the river of oblivion

and calling it life

as the flutter of particles

floats on the back of the blue

forgotten.

Yet there is the possibility that all this is a delicacy

bound to grieving too often over the

weed one steps on and suddenly hears the crunch of some

living thing now extinguished

work of the thoughtless bootheel of a simple step out of grace.

People say to always look into darkness

it will somehow become less itself

“Your eyes will grow accustomed” they declare

as if blindness to the longest day of summer

is the anecdote to a body that rots with each smile

in the face of a mirror.

This house awaits no traveler

better lock doors and seek shelter in pain.

It’s more akin to how we live.

Think now of when the only guest leaves

only absence will be left to wave goodbye.