hello, please leave a message after the beep

Among the dead,
gone & remembered,
poets from the past
who smoked too much,
who talked, who nested in bars,
who found room inside for both
despair & hope, who fucked,
who loved, who chanted mantras,
who sat alone on park benches watching
the sun climb up & up until
it hovered above the city.

Poets who jumped from ships
or swallowed a bullet or tied themselves
to a swaying tree or opened a wrist
or took an overdose of pain relief
or gently laid a feverish head into
the waiting,
open oven.

We left behind words,
words jotted down in notebooks,
words quickly scribbled
on scraps of paper, napkins, envelopes,
words found printed
in published collections,
the pages yellowed & thumbed
into road-map creases.
We left behind words,
words we passed on
in conversations hoping
someone understood us.
The words were there
when we rose
& the words were there
when we fell.