DEATH AIN'T GOT NO
SENSE OF HUMOUR

Stopped at
a red light

when who should pull up
beside us but Death

driving a fancy
invisible car.

He is dressed in
the usual trope

cowl and scythe
how cliched can one get.

He just sits there in mid air
tapping a boney finger

on  a wheel I
can't see.

His scythe sits
in the passenger seat

looking like a tame
pterodactyl

smiling with neon
and moonlight.

He nods to me.
I nod to him.

"Hope you haven't
come for me!" I grin.

He shakes his skull
back and forth.

"Just practising...what's de matter
you ain't got no sense of humour?"

He points a long boney finger
at the green car jumping the lights.

"Holey Moley!" I holey moley to myself.
"If that car don't stop it's gonna crash into us!"

And into us
it does.

But before it does
time goes AWOL.

The moment stretches into infinity and
the next second lasts for ever.

I nonchalantly watch the green car
hurtling towards us for an eternity

and just wish it would
get on with it and be done.

Even the rain falling
stops in mid-ari.

A bird's flight freeze frames
above the stilled trees

despite the bluster
of the wind.

Then as if someone had
pressed a button

infinity snaps back
into the moment's reality.

The green car bites with a roar
into my side door.

I watch it buckle and
stop a centimetre from my thigh.

I go out like a light and
the world does a runner.

The darkness is so
thick solidifying around me.

And then the world shamefacedly
comes back to me.

"Wot's yer name..." a voice keeps
asking "do you know uour name?"

Over and annoyingly
over again.

"*******!" Death
curses.

"How in Heaven's name
did you get out of that!"

My voice forms a cloud
in the cold night air

like a cartoon
speech bubble.

This breath is the sweetest
I ever have breathed.

The joke's on Death.
Death ain't happy.

"What's the matter Mr. Death..."
I quip all cocky like.

"You ain't got no
sense of humour?"