Death
By Sally K Lehman
Soylent this or that doesn’t have nothing on it
Life afters and life durings and ping-ponging your way through life
Intruders in the soul cavity of every man,
Any man, my man, her man
Jesus, man, just hold it up a minute
Look at the dead guy in a coffin
Let’s prop him up sitting so we can all see
Maybe take a poke
Maybe he flinches
Dead men telling tales of Lazarus and rising gods
Dead men talking stories in hard wood caskets
Mending ties that bind that wind that find us falling
Always falling into the next day,
Next minute, next moment, next
Big thing to hit the market in flattering corpsewear
Good God, hold on
Look at the baggie full of ashes
Let’s say it’s used for weed
Maybe we smoke her
Maybe we sweep her
Dead mothers in little brass basics
Dead mothers in urns for permanent consideration
She bit it, bought it, laid it down onto the good green
Earth meets ashes meets dust meets
Let’s get it into our brain, no more Mom.
She spent the year – August to July –
Busy with the business of leaving us behind
Look at the sad little photos of the end
Let’s pretend she’s not all bone
Maybe it’s a diet
Maybe it’s a myth
Dead is too real for the long run
Dead is too much for little lost girls
So deal with it, girl. You’re alone in it, girl. No more answers, girl. No more upset.
So sing about it, talk about it, write about it, hide away from it,
Because getting quieter
and quieter
only makes you want to scream.
Originally Published in Perceptions: A Magazine of the Arts, January 2018