poem – Page 57 – Hearts Still Care

Dirty Wishes

As I mourn your loss,
I mourn everything,
That time takes away
And death tends to bring.

Two loves have come to absence
But there is mom, aunt and sis,
And I have anxious furkids,
Who wait for attention’s kiss.

The world is on lockdown
And gives reasons for art.
It calls to a poetry
That rips from the heart.

I have chores and work:
Money matters like dirty dishes:
They have no sense of fatigue
Like love’s earliest wishes.

I have surrendered joy
To the fate-like powers.
I work at relationships
And I live through these hours.

My past knows I survive.
As the tears dry, I will know, too,
Sure, as the future knows life,
Life shall be known by you.

Strange how lifting
A body in death,
Though wrecks my back,
Still leaves me with breath;

But stifling
a heart break
Stops all air
my lungs make.

It keeps threatening to consume me whole:

This dark night of my questionable soul.

Death, separation and heartbreak,

I dread to think of what else they take.

For now as the summer sun grows hot

And the very earth condemns our lot,

The fates conspire and repel all desire.

Mourning comes in the building of a pyre,

With rules and laws, medicines and food,

What should I beg for and to what good?

I cannot blame an evil eye, or sin,

For all this breaking and screaming within.

It seems hopeful to call it the forge of life

And believe in higher metaphors of strife.

I’d rather know less of grief than I must;

I’d rather seek anything else to trust.