Dead Man Walking Poem by Eric Cockrell

dead man walking,
fisted hands in empty pockets.
eyes that never look up
and feet that just know the way.

small children running in a graveyard
chasing shadows, silent and grey.
an old burnt out house still smolders,
bare limbs grasping at the sky.

and love is an old bucket,
rusted, leaking on the ground.
that calls your name and
draws your face
in a room that no one enters.

there's only today and now;
yesterday lied, tomorrow died.
the taste on my lips cold and bitter
as arsenic on a rose petal.