One candle was never enough

against armies of indifference and

stupid decisions

that darken the days and nights of our lives.

Friends were shuffled in and out of the deck

like too many wasted and bent cards

holes punches through their centre by the house,

they were tossed aside as a chain smokers threw away

cigarette butts

and the sexual addict,

non-cigarette ones.

Sustainability,

the great buzz word of our times,

applies to the way we live our lives.

We can travel endlessly and keep relocating,

switching the sheets and new beds

but skeletons and memories have a way of

hooking onto your back

to the degree that walking upright is

impossible

and the worst thing isn’t even the memories

of frequently beds and too many unclothed,

it’s the pieces of heart given away so unceremoniously

and sometimes unscrupulously

that never find their way home,

because a piece of heart given never returns to the whole

it either splinters into someone elses’ heart

of crash and breaks on the cold floor.

The ones that splinter feel purposeful,

as though we have left and received mementos

and they still leave their mark and create

renewable connections,

but heard is not a renewable resource

and it can’t be recycled.

We all mine the pits of our hearts

retrieving heart like ore and smelting it

in the heat of passion and sex,

but it will deplete too unless it is used

to build a permanent home with love.

We can only create so many structures

from our hearts before we

Easter Island

our way to extinction.