We are dust, not gods.

I wrote this on April 16th, the night before someone potentially threatened to shoot up my school. (They scrawled it on a bathroom stall.) I doubted I was in any serious danger, but I thought I might as well write a goodbye poem. It's sentimental, but not sappy, I like to think. I wanted to say a good goodbye, but I more than anything wanted to be honest.

We are dust, not gods.

Gravity is God, and atomic attraction

But we are not gods

We fall, skeleton leaves, from winter branches,

Drifting down angel-eyed on the jingling breeze

We sink to the earth and then sigh contented

As tree roots spiral around our limbs, and

Roses grow from our shimmering skulls

No, we are not gods. we are dust.

But our souls live in the constellations, I hear

And swim in the sunset—doves!

We are geese breathing the clouds in the sky flying free

This is good—I like geese.

But we are not gods

And if the Universe collapses in on itself

In a confused mess of a spiderweb death

Or the Sun putters out or we scorch the skies with fire bombs

I know we’ll have lived and laughed and loved

And I have lived and laughed and loved

We must still exist in some stained-glass window

Dimension in the Universe, frozen moment—eternal

Our smiles and dreams and amber pearls of memory

Petrified in time, infinite somehow

We are men, not gods. we are dust! we are grass!

And we’ll grow and die and we’ll grow, like grass

And I? I will cry as Dust in my grave

I will smile and weep and grown into roses and trees

We are dust, not gods.

Thank God for that