The Dead Pour Me Out Like Green Tea

I am dead to many, a few are dead to me. I am forgotten by young women in green silk sarongs. Some of the dead have taken vows of silence lips forever sealed with amnesia. I have fished Koi ponds for the sun, drunk the passions of dreaming girls as if they were my own. Now I am an old man, I sip the jasmine as if it were a blood memory, yet mind shakes with a more than timid palsy. Ring the temple bell once more for me, I loved them all and you can keep your pallid pity. The dead pour me out like green tea and if I were just a ghost, just a thought once placed upon a damp bamboo mat, I will take that.