Poem: Ignus Fatuus

Lead me to the dead men
let me hang with them laughing
beneath the willow tree
We’ll reminisce of things
long gone,
proven false by time:
the hope while still distant
the memory while still near
God’s mysterious ways.

We’ll light bonfires
like homeless bums before
glowing garbage cans,
generating light but no heat,
searching in vain for
what we’ve never seen before
in the dim and darkening world.

Someone once said:
“That which is of most value
is the most insubstantial.”
I never understood or believed it.
But enough ashen yesterdays
have left me with nothing that won’t crumble
with a touch or a breath,
nothing at all
in this heavenbound,
hellbound world.

Now all I have left are those words,
which we babble over and over drunk,
ad nauseum, ad infinitum,
(whichever comes first)
breath burning under the smoke-ceilinged sky.
A prayer for air to taste,
somehow,
for once,
and once again,
not stale.