Elegy with a Lament for Red Front Bus

Elegy with a Lament for Red Front Bus

I found Eighty-Six-Twenty-Eight

flame-face flensed

corpse coach laid

in the mortuary drawer 

of the body shop.

Vermillion visage turned 

cinder grimace, 

crimson skin desecrated 

and discarded 

uniqueness peeled, purged

tortured non-conformer.

Yet as an anguished 

wail wells up I recall

the lesson of the moth 

“it is better to be a part of beauty 

for one instant and then cease to

exist than to exist forever

and be bored all the while.”

An ember can’t be trapped in amber

we should not pretend 

the ephemeral is eternal–

after all the livid livery was transitory,

so it goes, she has

passed us by–

riding in a red dress on the red carpet

she has scorched us with

her scarlet radiance, 

and we remember her beauty

by a gray scar 

left where she burned.

Eighty-Six-Twenty-Eight

The Red Front Bus.