Not every poem has to be about ashes, 

or about the twisted, sickled shape 

a heart takes in grief, 

 

or about how quiet the body can grow 

when a bullet caresses it. 

 

Let there be 

 

light. 

 

So I form you, the imagery of a 

burning matchstick a god in my mind. 

An attempt to lighten 

 

even the darkest veins and crevices, 

till this body becomes a lantern watering, 

my blood 

 

sun-bright. 

 

Right now I am walking in Eden's valley. 

 

Palms on my left, evergreens right. 

 

Right now, as far as the eye, there is 

no shred of sadness left in the 

world to rot. 

 

The birds sing no song of loss, only 

delight. The poet pens no syllable of 

ache, or longing 

 

or something hidden biting deep within 

the chest. 

 

Instead he writes about the motion of a butterfly, the victory it takes for a 

cocoon, that thing 

 

empty of grace, to fight, to become 

something as beautiful as the sun, 

or stream water 

 

washing the long hairs of a man. You 

wish it were so, that this brief fantasy 

could leak from 

 

your mind and drown the entire earth, 

every thing, petrified like that. You wish 

it were so, but 

 

even this poem is a man walking through 

an Eden orphaned of Eve, orphaned of 

Adam, in an evening 

 

bleeding, 

 

dying into 

 

night.