Gone: a poem

 Let me be one of the first to die

Do not let me say good bye

Place no more words inside this mouth

Upon this tongue that falters

without the scrapings of a pen

 

I am inexplicably

on the verge of tears

and simultaneously led

to a cave of grim placation

no goldfinches to sing to me now

green has withered

to the shape of a shadow

 

Mud fills my ears and eyes

senses dull to the

tingling of a piano playing

a sheet of black rises

above the rainbowed lines

 

I am enveloped in your

cold black arms again

sinking to the grey

as the clock ticks on the wall

to an empty room

where a cat sleeps in the sunlight

waiting for no one.

 

12-24-21

TJSEP