When you take the soil,
do you grab a handful,
or just a bit?

Is your nose sluggish,
or has it been days since
you’ve cried and you
smell the petrichor?

Do you listen to the priest
offering prayers? Or do you
turn hollow and hear only
your heartbeat?

Do you mutter a message,
grant your final send-off?
When you let go, do you
unfurl your hand and let it
drop like a heavy weight
leaving your open palm?
Does it seep between your
fingers and out of your hand?

Or are you swift, silent, eager
to advance the procession?
Do you toss it, as if sending
a ship off to sea?

Do you believe the carcass
beneath that pine lid cherishes
your gesture? Or do you do this
for yourself, for solidarity with
those with you? Do you think
there’s a difference?

When you take the soil,
do you grab a handful,
or just a bit?


-
by Aleksander Mielnikow | Alek the Poet

It is brutal
to have reached for
my trembling hand
and hold it

only to dust me off
back to my grave
without a goodbye
nor a burial

It is cruel
to have made me
believe I am one
with the livings

only to make my
second death
far more ******

O, tragedy indeed

Therein lies the fur, filled with running wind,
Milkweed in the scruff, the scent of wild-wood,
Some mystery-hearted forest where pulse begins.
Therein lies the Centaur, satyr, and god-disguised swan,
Ageless wonders prowled upon by an age-old Parthenon.
You broke your wolf’s tooth through those haunches of lore.

Therein lies the fur, filled with barking dust and dandelion war,
With a spine that stretched back to the she-wolf and city-birth,
The peeled nerve of a howl once tremored your Aurelian lips.
Therein lies the serf, hunter, fairer hand, and lord,
From wattles and daub, the wandering-sands of Saracen, or Crusader’s moor.
You kept the path beside to remind that instinct shines as the holiest earth.

Therein lies the fur, the warm, ungovernable peasant of sleep,
Ever prophetic in your skies by eyeshut-trace of the hunting moon,
Twitching at the day’s thousand faces, all asleep in themselves.
Therein lies the soldier, nurse, chaplain, and fell-prayer,
Mange-like war is the whimpering season with its flea-bitten welts of stars.
You struck blind but true at the throat of gas-hissing war.

Therein lies the fur, outracing the rain and the spout,
Nested with more birds and Autumn song than rain,
Your sleeping ear pooled like cool eaves of the barn.

I sing once more like a boy into your unfolded ear.
Listen always for my ancient, choral voice and your chores of play,
And race earback to the sun in the belly-grass of your free-eyed fields.
Leave your last paw mark, torn on the red clay of my hand.
You are forever wrapped in human touch, ageless and aged,
And if ever the dark in madder darkness encroaches,
Leave black eternity to my faithful eyes.

Confined within for seventeen never-ending years
Greeted every morning by its hollow disgusting sneer
Cutting fingers trying to peel off the layers of this theater
Getting stabbed and kicked in the head again, death is near

Another day, lost in the space
Feeling more and more alien
Piercing the days like a warrior
Have my head cut off a thousand times
Another day, losing my own face
Smells more and more my carrion
Peering through this barrier
Have my body buried a thousand miles down the earth

Existence does not mean belongingness

He drives into the desert in a Toronado,
Dust in his eyes from the open window,
Sun on the burned skin and black mascara
That augments his vivid gaze.
Black orbs that stare at the burning sand,
His mouth is defiant and morose,
He turns off the path into the sage and saguaro.
The car is like a black beetle on a carpet of tan.
He lifts a shovel from the trunk, looking crazed.
Digs a shallow grave in the sand,
He rips a talisman from his neck
And declares he is looking for something
Unclear and he slurs a chant.
“Something is coming”, he seems to say.
He buries the necklace and drives away.
Will he come back for it or leave it
for the spirits of the desert?
No, he will come for it every day
Bury it again and again
Until the spell wears down,
The perfumed season is done,
Or perhaps the spring floods
Wash it all away.