The undertaker’s blues
have nothing to do with a proximity
to death. An occupation is just that.  

Unwavering with his
probes and mysterious poisons,
He may even be mystified by the lilac flesh,
so whispery-cold and delicate now.
And yet depression
burrows into his psyche,
searches for the richest soil in which to plant itself.
Its roots spread  
like sharp serpentine veins growing
from an evil heart.

Maybe,
New and severely altered thoughts
make a man stop
and think. Maybe he will worry
as to how our bodies become
so soulless
immediately following death.

Solitudinous man,
questioning…
The true definition of death?
Does it really require wrenching that final,
most prized,
breath from men that still
have noble things to lie for?

I’ve seen my own father
ask these same questions
Of colleagues—
the living cadavers.
Those so void of concern,
that which departs a soul upon
our otherwise useless caverns.

I…
I’m gonna write like you,
Use pen and paper
Like I never could my voice

All the morbid,
The cowering thoughts and opinions
I will hand them to you
Because I never could lend you my voice

I’ll occupy my words—
Character and author like I’ve always tried to be
Like you taught me

I believe I’ll let my words introduce me
To all the people I’ve known for years

I like to think that you had very little shame.
I like to think I’m going to bear the soul, that’s never seen daylight,
Just like you tell me I should.

I.
Walking like slow molten-rubble-
Sleeping like acid rain--
Always know when to retreat.
She told me to always know when…
‘that’s how they get killed, you know.’
If you don’t know the proper steps—
1, 2-and. 1,2-and. 4. One-e-and... One-e-and. A.
There should be no pull, shove; strife.
The crawl should be effortless, so seductive
they don’t even realize what’s happened.

Until thoughts flow too easily,
like emotions used to.  
Organic; *******…
and they don’t even have heartslungskidneys.
Not any longer.

II.
She
was, or seemed to me,
to always be
there. When I felt most in need of that fix.
The itch for darker comforts.

She, as part of her lethal charm,
projected the kind of strength
Meant to be used in battle against
iron moralities.
She spoke of all things
gore and destruction
like she’d been there, like she’d done it all.
I have no doubt she had.

She used these things to her advantage—
As part of her recruitment
of the ones she could mold,
deform really,
into shapes of beast
always so willing to do as she wished.

III.
We used to laugh-
Hm hahuhhu hahhmm-
taught strings plucked mercilessly.
They told us we were a different breed:
there was surely something better about us.
We were going to grow impossibly
We were iron-strong. Never clad.
We were __inforced (no need for the “re.” we never had to be told twice…
Though they always did)

The first time a commander roars,
you are to act. The repetition is for it to really sink in.
Not the steps to take,
But the absolute power this (rounded reddened) man holds
Over you.
Hm hahuhhu hahhmm.

IV.
We stumbled home,
Some missing limbs, other chunks, and others-still others-
missing an entire brotherfatherson.
We expected no forgiveness,
did not pretend to even want it.

Cheers!

I propose a toast to the pink elephant in the room, that with the encroaching darkness ******* lightly across his abdomen, seeping through kidneys and out, out, through veins unaware that they are carrying their own demise.


Cheers to you!

Every time I see you, the chasm in my heart gets just a bit bigger.

And she, darling companion, falls deeper. So now she’s submerged in this canyon-- something sickly beautiful, said to be carved from glacial ice thousands of years before.

She’s irritating the muscle,
tiny toes picking off bits of scabs just beginning to heal.

And then I see you once more.

Cheers to you!

You’re in the center of this pyramid. You hold your wife above, your son and younger daughter beside you, an arm around each. Buy she lies below, unknowingly wait for all of this to fall on her.

You  balance my life on this precipice. Doom sleeps on either side. I’ll fall slowly to the left, wake the monster. It’s barbs will dig through flesh and I’ll stand-- an audience member.

You’ve grown too skinny, turned so pale. I wonder if your veins have grown dark as you’ve become accustomed to carrying poison meant to **** it before it kills you.

Cheers to you!

You who wont, can’t, end the world.

I pull myself up and out—emerge from my rabbit hole of ignorance.                                                       ­            
I have this fear of the cutting edge of dragonfly wings-
How unoriginal.

We all let the hollow swallow us cleanly down, almost forgetting the tiny 
pebble-  bringer of doom and resident of the gizzard- we will most certainly meet in the course of our journey.

I get sent secret messages of affliction—a disheartened face here, the nervous twiddling of thumbs there. Secret, I say, as they appear of fog and disappear with the flutter of an eyelash. They’re all my own, sent with sonar like that of the blue whale.

One looks born of red, achieving different color as eyes move inward. A girl wearing a Parisian hat and a scream that’s almost silent. Another comes silently during a drive, more sensation than image. Everything slows. It’s hard to conjure words, to make the right motions.

I’m reminded that life is a paint palate, a measure of darkness. I know there are people much farther along than you and I.

Cheers to you!

Being submerged in pain makes a person different.                                                       ­                                   

Born of loss, causing loss-- pain never really disappears.

Sore that festers, oozes, scabs, gets torn open.

Cheers!

Raise your glass as I speak so quietly, I can only hope
You’ll hear this from across the room.

Raise your glass to the memories I have of your hair- now reduced to silvery down- your strength.

Raise your glass to your daughters, your son, your wife. I think you know I cry for them—not you. Two girls. One living in two worlds- mine and a world of parties and experimentation. The other so smart and so repressed. One boy. Unbeknownst to him, he won’t know how to proceed without a father figure-figure father.  Unbeknownst to him, he’ll have to proceed without. A woman. She’s lost in this never ending labyrinth of test results; given too many choices when there should only be left or right. And yet, she’s not ready for it to end.

Raise your glass to Insanity, the mother of Brilliance! Endurance, the daughter of pain.  

Cheers.