I always thought that it was he,

my worldly-graced rival,

who stopped our love

soaring

to the forbidden lights that twinkle

once only

the prepared mind.

Now I find that this is not so.

I always thought that if only he

would do the right thing

and kill the

despair

poisoning all three of us

from the twilit corners

of his ailing mind

then, then the way would be clear.

So when he, leaving some skyward ledge,

was moments longer still the

winner,

a dazzling nightfall spilling the sick

from his head to dress the flagging

about a block of flats,

I allowed him all that.

And turn a cautious ear to the chorus

that said he had been

dead

for other years; yet also knew

another voice was singing

“The King is Dead,

Long Live the King.”

But I found this was not so.

She said we should bury our pasts

with him and try new lives

elsewhere. So she

crossed oceans and I towns, and

between the subways and the seas

he gained an immortality

we failed to anticipate.

Years wind on and downward;

ages that never wrinkled his face sit

heavier

over our dulling minds,

where only his grafted life-long youth

grows brighter.

Now we have no love or laughter

but believe in ghosts.