If being rich
is your only dream
then ask now
what is living?
In this earth, we leave nothing
having metal bands decay
over finger bones in dirt.
The dead were young like you
seeing colors in the sky, the night.
They are all there in the ground:
the kings, the loved, the scorned.
Of all the fighting done in life,
what for?
All of us are bones, renting paper skin.
Know now no one rules a thing;
the young, the old, the yet-lived.
The dead before us tell these things,
in their bones, exhumed, the suffering.
-V I L L A N U E V A
03.15.22
