In the years I spent chasing
the fires in my heart,
you laid coolly in the shadows
of beauty and success. So:
"Your heart's beating quickly, Peter--"
Of course it is! We all stare up at you
parts drawn to you, furious at you,
wasted by this gentle age
more so than you.
What made you better stuff than us?
The luck of sperm--ha! We spit at
Fate, who carved you Beautiful!
--and yet, affirm: if only
it'd been me, we say.
And all that fires taught us
drifts away.
I'd never leave my life for fantasy, I know;
glamour, fame, power, sex--
all better thought than lived.
And yet mere images thereof torment
and twist the bitter cord.
June 2014
