Funeral of the Living

Another poem

I wish that I smoked cigarettes,
Just puffing through the haze;
Our hairs already numbered down
With our remaining days. 
What is another year when we 
Are destined for the grave?
Why cut off simple pleasures just
To hoard the time we’d save?

To burn the leaf at both ends bright,
To live with our mistakes,
To stand and fall while knowing true
If  we have what it takes.
(Defining “it” has plagued us now
A century or more;
You wake up gray and aching and 
Wonder what it was for.)

To float up like a wisp of smoke
A  sacrifice in spades;
This funeral of the living turned
Into joyous parades. 
These pallid frames, these corpses gray
Can spring again to life
If only we remember that
Both ends can burn so bright. 

- Alexander