By the ramp of the dearly departed
Still lay his faded fingerprints
While yet another
Was thrown in the morbid bed
Still reeking
like death

The hall deserted
His breathing slow
Hope fading
The morale low
Thoughts crept
Like death

And another after another
Was thrown into the list
Ever growing
Breaths slowing
Ever reeking
Like death

Lying in a corner
Groaning beneath the mask
A soul once alive
Moaning over the past
Waiting for a cure
Like death

And one last breath
Felt in the night
He wished to be his last
He couldn't hold on
To this madness, so
Like death

There was this glimmer
A ray of light
The suffering might end
Things could go right
Maybe slowly
Like death

The world was healing
Not all hope was dead
The once confined bodies
Will rise out of bed
Defeating tragedies
Like death

With a combined might
And hope alight
Strength in prayer
And hearts twinned
The world rose up
From death.

The Lingering and the Unconsoled Heart
by Michael R. Burch

There is a silence—
the last unspoken moment
before death,

when the moon,
cratered and broken,
is all madness and light,

when the breath comes low and complaining,
and the heart is a ruin
of emptiness and night.

There is a grief—
the grief of a lover's embrace
while faith still shimmers in a mother’s tears ...

There is no gruesomer time, nor place,
while the faint glimmer of life is ours
that the lingering and the unconsoled heart fears

beyond this: seeing its own stricken face
in eyes that drift toward some incomprehensible place.

Keywords/Tags: lingering, unconsoled, heart, death, bed, deathbed, silence, last, rites, hospice, eternity, finality, infinity, grave

don't you dare smile
in the face of the
day.  don't think for
a second that
you are in control
of your feelings.  
see that person ahead?
don't acknowledge them.
head down, eyes forward,
mouth shut, heart
closed.
...good, now you're
getting the hang of
it.  now, accept everyone
else's authority but
your own, amass financial
debt, relieve yourself
with the proper drugs,
find someone under
the same
enchantment as you
and call it love.  
have kids because it's
the next step.  raise them
in your image.
then,

watch them repeat the
same cycles
and as you're dying, have
a flash-thought-
  "did I even notice who I was?  what I wanted for this life?"
and as the thresh
ceases to be held you
light a candle of hope-
your love the spark,
your children the fed flame.
you say,  
     "they will sever the momentum I couldn't, they will
          see it."
-after all they are made
to be better than you,
not simply blind copies.
yet as the kaleidoscopic walls
usher you on you wonder,
     "how many of my ancestors have lit this same vela del lecho
         de muerte?  how many were hoping it was their daughter or
            son?"

the security of tradition and
the risk-reward of novelty
played out across
lineages.  both correct
and incorrect in their
own ways...

which one reaches through
the ages and hums
in
your spine?

let us try brave resolve
till tongues untwisted
doing the ritual whisp
where found its rhythm in the breeze --
cocked back like a hammer
cutting through the silence
was the creaking of an open palm.

would you like to go for a swim?
it is cold and it is dark
but parts of us dispersed
across the eavesdropping tide
makes for a wonderful place to drown.

...

a secret is like a burden,
when it is shared, it is halved.