Jake

This is the day I have to write to you
A day that like our lost love
Is gray and stark as ash
Not like the day thirty-seven
Years ago when we met
Knowing an adventure would unfold
Sensing from a word found in your
Unabridged dictionary
That we would head out together
For destinations recondite

What became of our enterprise of
Great pitch and moment as you named it
Hamlet's speech caught in your head
We let go of each other in stages
Like turning down the volume of a
Song decibel by decibel until
We could hear nothing
We made the slow descent from Parry Peak
Where we had touched each other's
Loneliness and yearning forever

You chose to leave Fat Tuesday
A wife son friends family
As once I was eager to do
Then when you did not come
That stark gray October day
There was no alternative but to betray
Our pacts and promises our unbound
Tie to let unravel rarely requited
Passion like smashing a fist
Into a Nineteenth Century brick wall

Now your spirit if there is such a
Thing slithers toward James our host
Who met and shaped us both the poet
Whose murder suffocated  us 
Whose grim Oklahoma Halloween
Burial took place on that exact same day
For me stark and gray of your wedding
I witnessed like a zombie among
Revelers knowing death so intimately
Realizing how death and love are twins

Where hang those lips that I have kissed
Whose final words you gave to me  
Mere months ago  " Love you, Jack" 
Lips to say goodbye as you take away
On this day stark gray
A broken stem of the wormwood 
Wild  in my mad heart


Jack Jameson, Ash Wednesday, 2/13/13