i've lived with the old, long enough,
to grow immune to the words
of Kabir...
        notably concerning death;
today i watched a funeral procession
outside of the balcony,
yesterday i watched another,
   a mighty procession of "mouners":
the day was too bright and
welcoming life that death had
to be orchestrated with pomp,
     otherwise, like on most occasions,
death slips past with a psst or
a librarian's hush when
a sparrow sings too loudly while
somewhere in Hades the saints
chisel out epitaphs on
       coal rocks with Dover chalk...
tiresome day and absolutely zilch
worth of mysticism when old
people speak their tired tongues:
the dreaded nostalgia of men
and the dreaded everyday toward
eternity of women...
    death becomes so boring due
to its: old dog no new tricks -
   that, we'll,  everything becomes
predicable and signed...
               it's just a funeral on a sunny
day, when you think:
   I'm sure death itself, if personified,
must want to shy away and crack
a joke, sneak past the clutches
             of the formidable mother,
naturally, swing past god and say:
    and you ****** her and out popped
this, this Las Vegas spectacular of
   the gambler suggestion with
      mother breaking off my fingers,
drilling random holes in the bones
and throwing them for interpretation?
       deism and Pontius Pilate:
            counter the hand that inscribed
the fear in Belshezar's eyes...
                        you almost want death
to pass unnoticed,
       sure, Kabir, we all know the noose,
and we know that unlike in a democracy,
the sentence of death, we cannot veto...
yet of old people:
       clothed in it,
        riddled by it, converted by it,
for some resson: unanimous in
routine, exhausted by a plateau -
           sometime still pinching
    a wild expectation,
then returning into materialistic absolutism
and chore realism of
organising a funeral...
     and these seemingly endless cocktails
of pills...
      10+, which excludes the vitamin
supplements...
      what sort of achievement is there
in old age? notably when even grandchildren
do not visit?
               ah... the business of being
adrift on the waves of life...
god, give me a maximum of 20 years
more, the roulette and stubbornness
   of my drinking, each night,
   for the next 20 years, and then a
Caesar's ideal death: sudden...
               no matter the riches,
              a prayer unto death primo,
past the lunacy of imploring for
a clean heart and an empty mind and
somehow not being contaminated by ego...
        seems like hardly
an accomplishment, to be honest,
this old age...
      even with a life expectancy
in Sudan being almost a third less...
at least a death in the prime...
     and always and everywhere the oddity
of a diet, and a life past the century
or at least nearing it...
    otherwise, dear god,
                   nothing spectacular...
well... apart from a funeral procession
on a sunny day...
       when death has to be dragged
into the open and can't stroll past slyly...
pomp of the ****** ceremony...
    that dreaded talk
    of funeral attire and what shoes...
even the pagans would have deemed
giving the body to the element of earth
as stalemate with oncoming life,
with gravestones acting as anchors dragging
people down down down...
        barricades and a history stuttering...
to give body unto the earth
rather than fire...
                       seems the most crass
     endeavour, and whatever "improvement"
was to be seen, in imagining
a resurrection...
                          a mummified jaw-drop
at the joke;
                     mind you,
    Sveedish ***** doesn't have a potent
scent vilifying the perfumery of a hangover...
   funny...
   the ever persistent hope in death...
   a hope which could not eventualise
itself in the commerce between the living
eternally fixed by
a communion with the death:
   cigarette ash sprinkled onto the hand,
and subsequently licked off,
followed by a shot of *****...
   this is my body, this is my blood.