Tramps Like Us

When you went up to Heaven, you sent me strait to Hell.

You often haunt my sleep and waking dreams

   while your children haunt my knees

   though I know they are all swimming

   happily oblivious

     in a bottle,

          in a freezer,

               on a shelf.

Last New Years I wept fresh tears

    though I had counted nearly seven months.

About myself I had to learn

   that in my heart grief’s a slow and heady burn

   like incense and in some sense

there’s no existing substitute for young and truest love. 

You floated upward in a paper lantern

whose yellow light I watched burn

       and in my mind your soul

                 wasn’t the only

                      to depart.

As our earthly affair diminished

     moving from the present to the past

I heard you saying it was finished

     and I thought that I’d explode from the swell.

For now instead, separate we’ll tread

     until again,

     my dearest friend,

our two joyous cymbals clash.

And as black hands swept

     that thing into space

     these things fell softly into place.

Though your ghost has left, and for you all my tars I’ve wept

     January 15^th will always be your day

     and were it not for you

     know forever

          that I’d never

               be the same.