Shelley’s Curse

Fall feels subterranean, Poet of the dead leaves driven like ghosts.
Arboreal hair loss tumbles across sullied , over-trodden landscapes
repenting replete. Dispatched, spelunking the depths, charged

with vital health points to battle mini-bosses of days that never
cease maturation, chained to love laborious, while the guard
has not been changed for some time, while we’re all under new

management.. And so do I, with my hair full of dead leaves,
let these flakey bastards take me through the dirt to be the satisfying
crunch under a child’s feet, the shitty chore under the same kid’s rake.

Drug ‘til bloodied, over terra so jagged, on a September morning
with the you removed to be just another day of decay, a plain one
unassumed. Not yet buried, exhumed to be exalted as Caesar’s crown,

brownish orange laurel leaves quilted complacence. Mere and mortal
garnered exclusivity in the soft simplicity, Seasons age as well
as the people who’ve lived them. Great, worse, great, worse.