We Killed

Whose prophet told him to bet on
chance not odds because
she's a better lover she tells more
truths whose mother always kept
milk on the table kept bread in the
oven kept a full cup for Christ who
never came without gifts who kept the
door unlocked for any ghost who
came who
loved a prayer and a song who
loved verses from the book of
Anger or Hate who
lip read the rapture and day dreamed the
meat whose

Slaughter was in reverence to
excellence and baptism and
honesty and virginity and truth
or half truth or shades of fractions of
truth or maybe opinions even but certainly
not lies whose slaughter was in honor of
Bill and Joan and Patrick or
Anthony whose whale never swallowed
Jonah whose bush never burned whose
lips never peeled from sunburn cruelty whose
tied shoelaces never tripped him whose
skinned knees were then a lie whose
guilt trip was false whose
sex addiction was his own weakness whose
liquor flowed by his own hand whose
tears were only sweat whose
volume upon volume of Conan Doyle were
only testaments to his boyhood innocence and
I wish truly I do that
we could I could rescue him from the
inkwell of his own insane downspiral but
the internet and the Heidelberg press
cahooted to kill something beautiful and
since then there's been nothing trustworthy
about us.

Because we killed the last beautiful person.