I follow poppy flowers down avenues gray and pestilent. I pass the radiant windows of Avalon while crows perch the ticket stands. Sidewalk lifeless as frowning clowns droop on their way to another wake. Fluorescent signs hang from concord wires. I tire of the tired, I drain from the drained. I am the modern death.
School children are made from the same cosmic juice blend as me. They are the modern death. Politicians wear my infamous black garb. The modern death is them, just as well. Senegal actresses patter on their patchwork paste texture makeup and rose circles, hiding tears illuminated with the truth of tragedy. There is no doubt they are the modern death. Faerie potpourri in desolate East Hastings and clairvoyant row enticed by false visions of hallucinated men crouched beneath rotten cement canopies while locusts click and clatter midst their sorrow. They are buzzing incantations of the modern death. Tibet is falling hold to corruption while the boyish monks calm in their meditations, are interrupted by agony wept Bhikkus bent in ****** transgressions, even Buddha is the modern death! China is a communist factory housing too many chimneys clogged with silent sufferings. Communities hiding in thin dust masks bearing the insignia of the modern death, only seen underneath ultraviolet light. My role has been diminished in recent generations, I'm growing old and flogged with decay, same as you, modern death.
We're here for a final round of drinks cool on our chasm lungs breathing big bang radiation for many years while the batteries in our clocks begin to fail us and the Hospital calls occur in succession once we get too sick to see the harsh planet we'll all have the privilege of dying in. I'm the modern death watching pale static reruns of the nature channel in a finely decorated room in some death camp retirement home waiting on the last day, inevitable. There's no place here for the modern death, not anymore.
This is what the poets were talking about! all the bodies are already skeletons.