"catafalque" poems
I love the idea of healing,
But I'm not just suffering from symptoms,
I am the sickness,
Punching myself black and blue,
Refusing to stop until I'm soaking red.
I'm better off suffering from the thing that kills me,
Than cutting away parts of me until useless fragments remain.
Like the captain that goes down with his ship,
I will never see salvation from this point onward.
This disease has seeped into my cells
And now I'm more sickness than human.
If I took away the biggest part of me,
What would I be left with, but emptiness?
Mar 2, 2017
Mar 2, 2017 at 10:55 PM UTC
The hearse set off through the mansion gates
Pulled by a pair of greys,
Stepping high, so they’d not be late
For the church’s hymns of praise,
Lord Gordon Knox on the catafalque
Awaiting his final ride,
Just down the hill where the graveyard spilled
And spread on the eastern side.
But staring out from behind the grass,
From between each tree and bush,
There gleamed the beam of a hundred eyes
In a sacred kind of hush,
The word was out it was Gordon Knox
Set to take his pride of place,
And from the woods had come every fox
To afford his lordship grace.
For Gordon had been the Master of
The Aldermaston Hunt,
Had chased them across the countryside
More than a man can count,
But somehow managed to lose the fox
As it turned, became covert,
And often seemed to confuse the hounds
As the fox returned to earth.
Three generations had come and gone
Since the young Amelia Knox,
Had left to walk in the countryside
And found a secluded copse,
The peasants say that she fell asleep
By a well protected earth,
And Reynard Fox had uncovered her
Before she had given birth.
So Raymond was the first of the breed
In a mix of fox and man,
A Knox by name but a fox by shame
When his mother’s guilt began,
And when he had a son of his own
He could see that the eyes were sly,
And every fox in the countryside
Could tell him the reason why.
Gordon carried the bloodline on
Though he rode to fox and hounds,
He ruled the hunt with an iron fist
They were hunting in his grounds,
And every time that the quarry went
He would make a lame excuse,
The scent was wrong, or the wind was strong
Or the hounds were far too loose.
And every time that the Master died
And the hearse had trundled by,
The foxes all came out to see,
In a way, they said goodbye,
But Gordon had left no son behind
Just a daughter, Elspeth Knox,
And I heard they’d given up on her
Till they found her in some copse.
David Lewis Paget
Aug 19, 2015
Aug 19, 2015 at 1:24 AM UTC
(The Art of Failing Goodbye)
I covet your closeness; how could I not? You were my world once upon a mime. Honestly. Though my pride will deny it, our demise left me discarded. Hiding amongst the few collateral souvenirs: stupidity and bitterness.
I bestowed to you the best of me; although you never asked me to. My heart, body, and soul - yours for the taking - a decision made on my own accord. Because you never asked me for any of it. You never asked me to do the things I did. But I loved you - innocent as that. Thus, relinquishing logic entirely.
Hardly more than a stranger, I felt I knew you; unaware of the lidded fabulist within. A mere tourist of my chassis; enthralled by my looks. Enthralled by just me. “In love” so deep, you attempted suicide twice. Upon my rejection – in theory. They almost beat you to death, and left you to the wolves. Deserved it? An understatement tenfold. And yet. My compassion was what saved you.
I protected the same entity who pulverized my own.
They all said you were no good – they said a mythomaniac would leach onto me until there was nothing left, ****** dry – then you would leave. Onto the next; life on the move. Daddy said you’d leave me in shambles. Was he right?
…Duh.
A question sheathed in rhetoric; absolutely. A black hole does not give back. Wake UP, m Maple – Ali – Oliver – whatever you are today.mWake up, you ****** And look here.
You ruthied(sp?) me last Halloween, took my body as your own, enabled a cycle I’ll no longer accept. The girl who cried rape…an alias to forever haunt me.
No one believed me then. Why would they now?
This final hurrah; a Halloween blackout. Wherein, you personified my worst nightmare. A cruel and unusual punishment – at best. And then.
You slithered and slinked away; no apologies – no goodbye for me. You’d taken all of me. Just like they said. All my value – dismembered and pocketed. Off you went…as predicted. Onto the next…life on the move.
You etched your gimmick; smuggling trust; squirreling intuition - these morals I'd entombed - you burrowed away. Promising Eden, you offered a map; directing me as I sailed the route. The garden, however, was not what I found. My catafalque(coffin) negated expectations you set; a utopia of dazzling, abundant nature. For, you'd devised a mousetrap; and I'd glissaded willingly inside…
For the very last time, gaze entwined. Blue on brown.
SNAP.
Jan 23, 2016
Jan 23, 2016 at 7:48 AM UTC
There were
those thickets
of flat
graying trees
and a frozen
skin of lake
out by the
hunched rink
behind Georgian Woods
the terrace apartments
where Dad lived
after he left
the family.
Left to my
own devices
while Dad
delved in books
I slipped out
the sliding door
through
the frost-grass
and the
snow branch gap
into the
unfolding stillness
of the drowsing park.
Sometimes
my sister
was there
with me
in the woods,
our play
always some form
of running away.
In the early
years Dad
smoked a pipe
his thick
blue rug scented
with Captain Black
**** tobacco,
the white tin
with the rigged
ship logo.
The humming silo
of the air purifier
Dad's concession
to my convulsing
asthmatic chest,
close-gathered lung
like the branch bark
that scraped
my lip
as I ran in
the park wood,
blood slipping
across my face
and down
into the ache.
Dec 21, 2018
Dec 21, 2018 at 2:00 PM UTC
Atop a catafalque, the morbid pedestal lies placed up ahead
Beautiful casket of pale birch laced with marbled ornament
With a flower orangerie settled upon final resting bed
Grand expensive suit fitted perfectly the dead man, toes to head
Funeral home better than his living home; lived cheap, died rich instead
All costs money he never had
Oh the luxury of being dead
Oct 31, 2019
Oct 31, 2019 at 12:35 PM UTC
I visit you in the night during the moon, as I can see you are restless.
Tossing
and
Turning
Because your bones ache.
I subtly stroke the strands of white hair barely covering your spotted scalp.
Dying
and
Decaying
After being here for so long.
Find comfort in the fact that when your bones are swallowed by the earth, I will renew them.
Fresh
and
Familiar
To make you feel young again.
I am not from the vapor clouds, nor am I from the heart of the earth.
You will never see me.
You will never know me.
And when you are born anew, I will leave you.
So rest those old bones in that catafalque of cloth.
Unwrap your skin and let me take them.
May 31, 2014
May 31, 2014 at 1:30 AM UTC
One time,
Now or in the future,
Clear or blurred in dimness,
Certainly I will go,
Back to my origin,
In which I was happily extant,
Before I ventured in my mother’s womb
Back to this realm I will gate-defy
Leaving my skin an empty husk,
And go there riding in a wagon of death,
Pain and grief in dutiful caesura won’t be;
My fellow passengers or sailers,
Only oblivion to the past a sure pal,
Kissing and messaging my bodiless me,
From which I derive solace for my past,
The life I went through on the crest of
Extremes in goodness and matchless pale;
Untimely demise coming in union with a kismet,
Having me buried minus a coffin, a shroud. Perhaps,
Not even a dirge or an elegy from eminent mouths,
As my cadaver hangs in hermetic darkness; unlit hut,
On a home-made catafalque, willow in stature like nothing,
The man died of erstwhile sham diet and Medicare,
Will be shelved and hanged like a fish on the rack,
Hence am thankful do you death,
Master of the un-mastered souls,
My beautiful darling and love,
Of my heart from bottom to brim
And comforter of the hopeless,
Thanks for taking me away
In the way so miserly,
In a beautiful out-beat
To the truck terrorist
Or the Suicide bomber
Or the Guns of juba,
Or the Ebolavirus
Or
Any
In
The
Ilk…
Sep 16, 2017
Sep 16, 2017 at 4:42 AM UTC