No one learns to die anymore

the children
are the ones who play in the clouds,
where lions roar with soft mouths
and fluffy tummies,
and black bears hug with love
and nighty-nights.

pretty girls and boys live in half-sun skies,
in soft faces, flesh and bones,
in the warmth of hands holding
hiding eons of fear and desire
with makeup and hairdos and gadgets,
and some kind of cool.

Time works with the winds,
spreading dust from the surface of the skin,
layer by layer we release ourselves,
to reveal the snake that slithers,
and the god with bloody claws,
the pain and the struggle:
the need and the sacrifice
as youth’s beauty fades.

No one learns to die anymore,
To let the flower go before it fades,
so that they can grow another,
wider, brighter, more profound,
across the land of valleys and mountains,
in the upside down and rightside up,
to hear the stories of wild cicadas,
feet tapping the crickets’ rhythm,
against a theater of pink and purple sky.