Adam Poems for the Living

By Keith Aaron Munroe

I didn’t know Adam as well as I would have liked but I was deeply affected by his suicide and what it might mean. His life is an idol of parables and interpretations even to a stranger. Everyone has to fight against despair and the only way to move forward is to learn from each other and in that way we honor the dead so that those who have passed away become the living avatars of our purpose, our ideas and the passions that give us faith. –Keith

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781669805397

Book preview

Hope

For you we weep and wait that the earth holds your bones as pearls in her oasis

to express not the silence of infinite souls but your own story

as we think of you and wait that the years we had with you bring to our hearts a dream of every

conversation awash with your eyes and their holy winters.

So I wish I’d had the chance to know you better

as if had the hours discovered in our limbs a fellowship of true men,

meeting each other to find in what things they disparage a philosophy that has no prejudice

but in what bloom though its youth has withered the spirit for which all friends find those they love

though their body be at rest

such meaning as to be found in their arms

the grace of animals.

I wish I could have known you better

because what other conclusion could there be but that you were beautiful

because Julie loved you

so you must have had in your bones the poetry of birds lost on the wind in its metaphor of prophesy.

So now from form you have departed yet I hope there is some way I can discover

wisdom in the emptiness you left behind

with the absence of your shadow as all spirits speak in the paradox of their silence

a name without meaning

except to from the earth make in her undying lands a love which for each of us

will cause us to remember your hair, your eyes, your mouth

upon which was spoken so many things

which will forever pain your tomb with its arguments against despair.

There Is No Then Or Now Or What Will Come From Nothing Only Always Do We Love For In All Creation Is The Sorrow Of Living And Being Born To Bear The Weight Of What Freedom Comes From Passing Into Shadow To See As The Sun Rises The Darkness Of A New Dawn

As we all take part in the memorial I accept pain but with the stars a patience to last into the night

as we all speak to the crowd and say what part we had to play in the prose as they make a purpose

of his life now left behind still living in the permanence of what grief make from the earth

the bread of angels

but I don’t know if I can let that be enough

he means more than life itself to someone I love so I must find a way to make his name a memory

of trees in autumn

so she can be enveloped in his arms as death keeps her company in the cold.

She loves him more than life itself

so I must become his brother if I am to walk beside her as all that comes in autumn

is how beautiful is life in what deep hues spell tragedy the passing of his mortal soul

to be what end the earth disparage in its dying of lonely men in love with the poetry of coffins

is faith in what will always be far away but keeps his lover close in the congress of angels.

For wings first express now gravity make from emptiness what purpose

had it cause to wither would will the soul to rise so too do I think of Adam, reading a book by the fire

and for all the unimaginable weight of what despair must have laid upon his shoulders like a stone

that had as scripture on its unforgiving matter the misery of Jehovah

I believe Adam was though his bones must have been with such pain a purpose seeking death

the image of a man whose tears give blood to what shuddering breath has prayed for wisdom.

So I think he walks with her, a truth I will try to understand

for she loves him more than life itself and because I love her too I will never forget to speak his name

in reverence

as if to speak it is to express in poetry the promise of his youth.

Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam.

Rest

Sometimes when I wake before the sun I see in the obsidian air what sadness must have discovered you

yet I wonder:

Was it only despair,

could your conscience see in its end the freedom acquired when to the silence that the body becomes a

mirror of stars and their avalanche of words with no meaning except to propose we give ourselves to

emptiness and let our breasts bleed a prophesy of love

like bread what wilderness will provide its clothes of shadow?

You are now as with will anonymous the name the wind calls to me and asks that I speak of nothing

but gaze upon the trees as in their grace has the earth made coffins of their poetry

and prepared each person to have no purpose but peer into the dark and find in its forgiveness

the philosophy of wounded eagles.

So this is how I see you

so lost in what will the mortal mind makes a prison out of liberty that to those of us who seek you

we feel trapped but I believe you are so close you must be far away left to travel by the passion to which

you call to us and feel in the emptiness the poetry of angels.

I bear you no ill will.

Perhaps we could have made promises to each other but what would that matter,

would it change the meaning of the worlds I love you?

As if were we to think of heaven and imagine her empire the consequence that caused you to

understand despair and disappear into the cold it would change what reality remains that to all love,

to all hatred, to all sadness and despair your laughter is in the wind its epitaph of metaphor.

So we need not look for you as in the emptiness is proof that your heart prevails to speak a prophesy

that express not sorrow but that we make walk as fools among the shadows.

There is something in the silence, some music to see as errands leaving the earth to have followed

into eternity the beginning where all hours slip away and leave behind a memory of peace.

If it’s not too late to say it now though I should have said it long ago I love you Adam

and I hope that while you soar amid the glory of dreams