What’s the measure of obsession – when beauty’s luster pales to gloom?
Is it wasted flower petals, river boatwrecks under a moon?
Is it love letters from baby turtles read aloud to bashful girls,
Or earrings strung and pasted with paper clips and river pearls?
Is it sewer pipe professions, a granddad’s aluminum canoe?
Or a voicemail clogged with accents, a past week’s disjointed news?
It’s tandem-ridden motorcycles, reeling red around a curve
And delayed gratification’s endless plodding dirge
It’s the cracked bells of an existence tolling hollow someone’s name
The dead embers of a poison hope flickering eternal flame.