"Where do we bury our heroes?"

Part 1

Where do we bury our heroes?

My grave was only for myself

The truth trades in ones and zeroes

With no key for the code

Tell of ferocious undated

Exploits that never came to be

Sorrowful, foolish and fated

Is all we leave alone

Like rusted roofs and cracked pavement

Derelict, dusty, overgrown

A house undone, a revenant

Floats through the light and dark

Blessed be you, gentle treader

You are autumn, soft slipping in

Breezy, uncanny, a soft weather

But leave this one untouched

Footsteps upon the shaky stone

Unstable as a new foal's legs

You didn't even telephone

But stay, and death defeat.

Part 2

Where do we bury our heroes?

My grave was only for myself

The truth trades in ones and zeroes

Yet you and I are two

Colours are mixed, feelings blended

In a soft-lit, carpeted room

Pull me with the thought of a red

Ruby rustle of truth

Like some black cloud, feel the horror

The weighty oblation of truth

It's enough to make a man stutter

And tremble everyday

Tell me of death, of atonement

Not our role nor the road we walk

Yet our sorrow, like sediment,

Adds a shade to this sea

What is purposed has a purpose

Even lost paths and undone lanes

In those places we most restless

See sunlight smiling on

Follow me out to the other side

Past the gate, past the fence and then

At last, by the by, eventide

Meets us, sultry and strange

Pick a shovel and choose whether

Left or right - help me to fulfill

Providence. Dark is the measure

Of this cup we must drink

Will you help me, will you reason

This out? This grave is an embrace

I always loathed, yet in season

I must be ready still

One day you or I will enter

That dark space, "the way of all men"

That inevitable winter

Descends, our nature's dove

A friend, too good, a steady hand

You add your sweat to mine, so kind

And, dropping, it wets the wasteland

Where we will one day be

I share conceits, you apprehend

The end: two-week old soda flat

Thoughts. It's blackness, like a by-end,

We are a splash in the dark.