F for Firsts
To be in a frenzy for flooding a paper with ink
Paper metamorphosizing to a letter serving as my heart’s sink
My dear dear friend or lover or mentor, but it is not dedicated to you
Play the role of receiver and keeper of my evaporating and dying youth
Posted my first letter, but did not include the return address
For it was just a simple channel for my depth to be spread under duress
To be in ecstasy to share my first dance with a beloved
Calling the Gods themselves to enlighten: The Sistine Chapel Moment replenished
My beloved, for I, cannot keep my zeal a secret stealth
Play the role of the fellow performer of my waning health
Danced away my first dance, my beloved had been forgotten
My youth is a distant past and my health is now sullen and rotten
Undergoing the arrow of my subjective passage of time
With pride: larceny, delinquency, arson all my firsts were truly sublime
Benign embarrassments, scar shopping, squandered wealth, none that deepened my heart’s injury
Adopted a religious fool’s theory of how that was my unrivaled path to glory
All my collated firsts eventually exhausted
Horror washes over me: the montage replayed and my mind arrested
Uncertainty of my future rippling through the manifestations of my craft
Nothing more to be done, my dear friend let that be my epitaph
