What Every Poem is Trying to Tell You
Over wine the famous old poet
tells me how all he can think of anymore
is the fact of his own death.
It dogs him through his waking hours
and keeps him from sleep.
I’m 20 years behind him
and already spend too many hours
contemplating the looming
eternity in which I will not exist.
It’s what every poem is trying to tell you.
It’s why we drink and fornicate
and go to church,
why we fall in love with apathetic bartenders
and assign meaning to the alignment of the stars.
It’s why we read Dostoevsky and Camus
and travel to faraway places
with exotic buildings and food,
why we nod to ourselves reassuringly
when we read that 56 is the new 37
and scour the internet
for something to make us
bigger and wiser than death,
desperate for any distraction
from the coming dark
and the old poet’s
haunted dreams.
Horror Sleaze Trash 