Let Me Burn Poem by Mark Heathcote

Beneath the tree of God
I am not sinful or sinless.
But if doomed, I am to die.
Can I borrow your lips?
Your heart and your smile
taste the fruit of good and evil
and know all there is to know
about ripe plums and their stones.

Beneath this tree of God
if I am condemned to know
only this flesh - lives in this flame.
we call a body that dances
leaps headlong for another.
Let me burn at a steady rate
and in your arms, my love,
slowly, ever slowly disintegrate.