Oh ******, detested fly,
I do hate you so,
From the gossamer that is your wings,
To your greenish, blue-black glow.
With your thousand-eyed empty stare
Inflaming my disgust.
Oh ******, detested fly
Die you must!

To say its nothing personal
Would be an outright lie.
I hate you with a hate so pure
As you light upon my pie!
The vermin oozing from your feet,
Contaminate the lovely crust!
Oh ******, detested fly
Die you must!

Perhaps a mighty truncheon
I'll swing with my righteous hand.
Perhaps I'll blast you off the wall
With a well aimed rubber band.
However I dispatch you hence,
On this you may place your trust...
Oh ******, detested fly,
Die you must!

How fine when your mangled torso
Is delivered to the trash,
And serenity descends once more
Upon my corned beef hash,
And all within my kitchen,
Is safe from your probing lust.
This is why, detested fly,
Die you must!

My funeral will be held in the backyard.

My urn will rest on a small table,

Covered with some odd colored cloth.
(Their choice, I'll have no preference.)

Some of my friends will come.

Nervous laughter will be heard.

Stories will be told.

Later, everyone will go home.

Death dances round me,
A specter, a shadow,
Always just past the corner of my eye.

She weaves a tapestry thread through my life,
Taunting me meanly,
As all I know and love dies.

She arrives unexpected.
She arrives unannounced,
But sometimes her calling card comes in advance.
Surprise or no,
She still sparks a shock,
Whenever she enters the room.

Death dances round me and round me...
And round me still again,
Til the band strikes up my song,
And curtseying politely,
She insists I join her in a waltz.

We have been here since the last black star exploded.
Here, in this expanding expanse, we ever shall remain,
Until the final neutron decomposes,
And there is no more love,
And no more pain.

Hush!
All is dark!
Mother has put out the light.

Wheeling through the dark blue arc
Of a wide cloud spattered sky,
A solitary vulture sails in circles
With sharply discerning eyes,
Come to clean the carnage below
Left from the struggle for who lives and who dies.

No harbinger of Death's cold finger, she.
Humble, faithful servant
Turning old back into the new.
When the vulture comes, Death does not linger;
Death's odor departs
And Death's cold finger
Is made warm as fresh earth,
Where flowers bloom better than last year
Because the faithful vulture has kept faith with her thankless work.

Hydrogen and Helium,
Bound in Gravity's ambitious grasp,
Go from absolute cold to incredibly hot,
In a blinding fusion flash.
Billions and trillions of twos become ones
Joined together in fiery suns.

Oxygen, neon, aluminum and sand,
All forged together in the maker's burning hand.
Carbon, copper, yttrium and gold
All made to order in creation's white hot mold

And when the iron frying pan invades the maker's heart,
It only takes a moment and the maker comes apart.
Iridium, platinum, thallium and lead,
Go rushing through the cosmos,
To announce the maker's dead.

Gone but not forgotten,
The Maker's flesh and bones,
Billow through the Milky Way,
In search of other homes,
And come to rest in a spinning cloud,
Of gas, debris and stones.

Within the swirling chaos,
New centers begin to form,
Another million years or so,
Another maker born.

This maker warms a rocky earth,
And brings forth lakes and trees,
Birds and cats and Summer nights,
And eventually you and me.

Little bits of makers past,
Make all the things we are.
Two souls become one in a fusion flash,
Love...born in the heart of a star.

I wish I'd been an astronomer,
Gazing through my telescope's tunnel,
Into the distant, unimaginable past;
Through dark matter veils,
And swirling, turbulent gas.

Inside hyper-hot primordial clouds,
Hydrogen atoms danced two by two,
To make the things that made me and you.
Through my telescope tube,
I would see glimpses of our future selves,
Wrapped in elemental shrouds of expelled outer layers,
Drifting mid radiating clouds,
Of star babies struggling to be born.