Dreams die like butterflies

caught in a rainstorm

they start-off as heroes, flying towards the sun

fields of tulips

red and white

colors, flowing into art—painted on the imagination

Finally, roll-call

grasshoppers, demanding, census

and the butterflies burned out of the sky.

Every failure ends in poetry

Every poet, believes they are painting flowers for their butterfly dreams

and the locusts land, eating the brains of momma’s boys and sensitive men

feasting on their flower petals

blowing, in the wind.

Accountability, is a strange word

for the artist, who thinks he is special

Suddenly, he is only a body

without any wings

without any color

just an ant, marching in unison

to his eventual, execution.

Poetry is the last chance

When it dies

it wilts like a flower

the last bit of beauty fades

from the stained-glass wings of his cathedral tower

where he worshiped

in the sun,

drowning

in the rain.