An Obituary Explanation
Death is a diabolical diamond, only beautiful when you examine its facets. These poems do tell stories about death from the perspective of people who deal, not just with the realities of vacancy, but the truth about the (temporary) survivors.
A Life Collage
I speak now of Wilford Banes,
who collected murderabilia,
from spent shell casings to
shattered windowpanes,
they all remind him of what it means
to kill, die and escape Gerry’s kites.
His house holds relics,
dug from urban craters,
of unborn and aged alike,
body remnants like torn cloth,
bits of bone and rope-entrails.
“Were they famous, the owners of these abandoned tatters?
Did they perform heroic acts?”
“Just one, of them,” he says. “The one that matters.
In a broken memento of George’s
coronation, are Churchill’s cigar ashes.”
The price tag? A mere trifle,
compared to a splinter from Oswald’s rifle.
“They remind of my mum,
who died in the ‘40’s blitz,” he says.
She liked a good cigar. Who doesn’t?”
Really, I say, you paid for ashes.
Unverified. Available as any trash is?
“I trust the merchant. He lived next door,
as I remember.”
But Wilford couldn’t as the years wore on,
and the shops and houses disappeared
except in photographs he couldn’t see.
Too old. Too gullible. Too poor.
But proud of Churchill’s ashes
he willed to me because I chose to believe
in things I cannot see.
An Obituary Explanation
The winds of change killed Frederick. Because the wind is invisible, denial failed to protect him until he handed his grandson the keys to his graduation present, and his sons drove him to the cemetery. The wind rearranged the world. Blew away reality. Danced with tumbleweeds, to music no one listened to but him. Made time the enemy, change the weapon.
“Let’s go. Mom will water her flowers,” the boys said.
“No, we brought roses last time and now the scarlet petals have scattered and the stems are skeletons,” the old man said. “This time, I will stay to guard her garden.”
I will guard it with a coward’s fear. The kind that lives on because death’s so scary.
I will guard it with blurred memories. That laugh while driving bumper cars.
I will guard it with regrets of words not spoken. The words ‘I love you and hate cancer.’
I will guard it with the weapons of an attic box. Stuffed with trinkets, tokens, gadgets.
I will guard it with stones that crown the heads of ancestors. Those who loved through a thousand years.
I will guard it because you never knew her when she danced. And held my hand while a nurse said, “Push!”
I will guard it until she opens the door for me. You go home.
Legacy
The hallways are endless,
each door a locked closet with parts of you hidden
from all but a few who remember
for most are far past mattering,
grown up and old
beaten up by time
and scarred by the constant battering.
Occasionally the children stop,
to knock or kneel
crouch and strain
peeping through keyholes,
“Hell-o, are you in there?”
pressing their faces against floorboards,
before rising and musing as usual,
that your life is bare.
In death as in life,
you ignore visitors willing to
forgive you.
Your hell was aloneness,
and now, so is theirs.
You abused your children,
who want to love you still,
your victims, now your heirs.