Dear M,

It has come to light
that outside contingents
are perhaps interested in destroying values,
but the difficulty lies
in the fact
of separating outsiders from insiders
amid the apocalypse of Beauty
which made me sad and miserable inside
when all those brave and foolish and remembered souls
left their prisons
only to be murdered by the slavery of freedom
instigated by the population of cowardly murderers
who were told time and time again
not to murder Beauty, Truth, or Love or Justice.
I don't know that I want to live
either here or there
because the matter lies in the heart of creation
and not the individual
but sometimes it came down to that too
and about all the love
I wasn't lying then
but now I know better
than to fall in love before a war
though maybe it pulled us through
and afterwards looking back
isn't it ironic that I almost died
of a heart attack
days after surviving the worst torture in the world
amid depictions of Hell?

I am starving
and would like a warm glass of brandy
but we have nothing to eat
thank Christ
that fighting quits
because it is nearer to the nerve of the ear
and the heart of piracy
saved the Empire
like they never taught you in books
except for certain depictions like windows in the imagination
where a lost captain
was incapable of drinking wine with younger women
and a young man with some fair amount of luck on his side
defeated Monstrosity after Monstrosity
in those annals of legend
that have always confronted the human mind
with an alien wisdom
devoid of mortality.

Signed your wife,
Samantha