Dear Young Man,
(though if you still lived
you'd be older than my grandfather)
I wanted to write to you
to say I am sorry
there are too many battlefields
if anyone falls down alone
if anyone's name is whispered in time
like a secret
the key to our crumbled civility
I want to miss the feel of your soft locks
I want to know if you had
a someone somewhere
who missed them
I want to streak naked in your cemetery:
a garish blasphemy for those
content in the emperor's clothes
But, my dear young man
I am more like you than anyone above
when I fall, it will be into my own arms
fighting for a path garrisoned by my own feet
I will not need a ticker-tape parade
I will only need, as you have enjoyed,
a life of head-held-high
and a soft place to rest.
This, more than almost any of the others, encapsulates you. It shouldn't surprise then that it might be my favorite :)
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