Apropos of Autumn Leaves

Crowescent verse... it's been so long...

Remains of unchartered lives lie around me.

Some, crumpled like the pages of a novel never to be read,

Caper and gambol in their danse macabre,

Seized by a windswept tarantella.

They tremble as the breath of music

Arrests their souls and charges their movements

Toward the Abyss as they perform an undying ballet.

And they smile their wrinkled smiles,

Eager to reach their own conclusions.

The others rest in peace amongst their brothers

In an unmarked charnel house

As the remnants of a prolonged plot,

Remembered as falling stars amidst falling stars:

None to be seen after descending.

I alone bear witness unto this fatal, fitful resolution,

As God unto Man,

And I recognize the faces, but only briefly,

For there are myriad to behold.

I raise the vestiges naturally, oblivious,

And tear rotten flesh from spine, casting the tissue

Aside, flicking thick residue from my fingers.

Then, whilst I unconsciously drop the corpses,

I suddenly realize the essence of the event --

The purpose of my disturbing the dead,

Only to suffer the visceral resistance

Of an unfortunate, perpetual thought.