this place is a graveyard

This place is a graveyard.
You and I, I think we're the walking dead
or walking gods.
Gravediggers, at least.
Standing sentry over minutehand casualties,
battalions of cigarette butts
fallen in ashy coffins:
shallow onyx graves.

We bring more bodies.
Coroner is maybe a better word for what we are,
carrying these cadavers
wasted life in body bags
but that ain't blood, bub,
as bodily fluids go.

We are surrounded by these unmarked graves
lying on our own plush coffin for two,
but you're not Romeo
and I ain't no Juliet.

Our mortal sins bring death
and I know that we're mortal, too,
but we're not dead yet, sugar,
and I know the dead don't make my heart race like you do.

We sing dirges for each corpse
We count them in song,
each moment a funeral march.
We count on tombs.

Perhaps we are walking gods:
Ares, Athena.
We are war lords.

We mark off each skeleton on our calendars
and carry them in the sepulchres of our hearts.

I am a mausoleum in this place of death.

You lay bouquets of funerary kisses on the soft loam
of freshly buried reliquaries,
offerings to each other.

"You make love like I'm a thing to worship," I told you,
so maybe this graveyard is a temple.
Maybe the bones we crush under our holy feet
are our sacrificial alms;
maybe this coffin is the altar you lay me across.

Maybe sanctuary is being shining life amidst
the legions of carrion
we count on
to mark the days.