Raw

A life lived raw..
   You can embrace no greater flaw
Nor live a life more honorable,
     Taste no truer freedom.

Heartbeats of brutal honesty
   Pump blood as pain-filled and naked
As death herself,
     Yet that nakedness cloaks her in beauty
For she grinds out the essence of this life.
   Through death and pain,
Not life and joy,
     One can learn to truly live.

She pulls us to her bare breasts
   That we may catch a glimpse of life's precipice,
And though she's often thought as cold
     It is not so.
She warms those who allow her
   Engulfing us in a blissful end.

While we float with her in eternity,
   Gazing into crystalline eyes
We see:
     A life lived but once
In both naked beauty
   And raw pain
Is a life lived well.