"all i ask"

"all i ask"
written after a perfect evening by jake kilroy.

if i could just laugh with friends in candlelight,
telling the world's oldest joke,
one that grew in the very roots of this country,
the long arms of the trees that grew our food,
in the fields that buried our acres of dead,
just near the river that bathed our christs,
and emptied into the sea that gave us freedom,
back when we tipped hats that we wore,
during an era that never saw the end,
while the kids heard the folklore mystics,
of the sort that smoked long wooden pipes,
for they were the chants and the choruses,
found in the songs about absences and embraces,
remembered as the only true words said,
when we watched boats and trains leave us,
or the nights we starved ourselves thin,
as much of our hunger was for dreams and loves,
spread through us and woven into our bones,
twisted like ivy up and down our columns,
since we are mostly just empty palaces anyway,
treacherous as court jesters in a mutiny,
sacrificed as the one long poem of defeat,
colored spectacularly as a renaissance,
twirled into space by the demigods in rags,
sickened by their own heretic spells,
parched from the desert angels of yore,
horrified that the water will not clean,
blessed as the careless aches of man,
stranded to be the first cough of breath,
hailed as our god's last word on earth,
broken as an empty promise to time,
counted as seven days of waiting for light,
loved as words swept into an old vase,
seen as the quiet dance of ballroom grace,
written as the garden path whisper sonnets,
bagged as fireflies and fairies here to astonish,
captured as the rumors and splinters of age,
discovered to be the shifting world asunder,
because this is how it always has to be,
perfect in its escape and nothing without its heart,
so is everything, so is everything, so is everything,
i swear i wouldn't ask for a grand death,