bandits

bandits

we’re bandits, wearing painted masks and stealing compact mirrors
stealing life, and all the love we can, and matchboxes, and lilies
until we’re wanted criminals, celebrities of the living
and unburnt pyres of the dead.
but we are no suicide, instead
we are vandals, breaking in and carving our names on our neighbors’ bedposts.
we’re scientists and cynics, we are therefore we think
because we write our love letters in lemon juice and lace
and we believe in all the colors, but our favorites are shades of gray.
and we taste undertones of summer peaches in everything we say
and we make love to yesterday
and we welcome the decay
and so they call us
irreprehensible
uncontrollable
typical
invincible
by which, of course, they mean that we are alive
and we know it.
we live,
and living maybe only means we know that we are closer,
every hour, to our death
every moment, to the edge
but we are not afraid of dying
because we are everything
because we have kissed too many rings
to give ourselves to any deity.
because death, it seems, is a game we’ve all made up
to account for our misunderstanding
of where it is we are.
so we inhale oxygen and cancer and we’re dying by the minute
but we dance with the gypsies and we exhale fire and pearls.
and our mothers love our childhood ghosts,
but we love little fish instead
so we dive into the ocean
full of life and blood and death
and we open to the caverns and we whisper them our names
and we are real and we are free and we are rotted old doorways
and all we want is to abandon the ground, to feel the depths beneath us.
so we dive, and we open, and we feel our selves leak from our veins
and we know that soon, one day,
the sharks will find us,
but we are not afraid.
we are the least inspired of prophets
but we are prophets just the same,
and so we prophesy our self-made destinies
reading each others’ palms and laughing at the tall dark strangers we find
in every single one of our left hands.
and we laugh because we know it’s true,
because we know we are all doomed, we know
that all of our dark strangers will appear one day
with pretty eyes and a thousand teeth and forever in their kisses.
and on that day, when the sharks have caught up
with our blue-black, trailing blood
we will cry and scream and sing into the sea.
and our screams will be swallowed by the minnows
and they will think nothing of it,
but our songs will wake the sleeping whales
and they will remember things they long ago forgot.
and when our limbs are all torn off and our lungs go limp and drowsy,
our salty tears will realize that they have never been more at home.