"mortician" poems
her mouth was sandpaper.
her mouth was sandpaper
and she spoke like
a smooth surface,
words scraped into fluidity
like a wooden sphere,
turned over behind teeth ‘til all friction
is lost.
she spoke like the walls of a birdhouse
in the room of a dead carpenter:
pretty unassembled things.
her mouth was sandpaper
and every kiss chafed,
rubbing raw my lips
and tongue
crafting with each touch
drawing blood like
juice from an apple,
like sap
from wood already cut from the tree.
her mouth was sandpaper
and she told me
*i bite my lips,
rip at
the inside of my mouth,
cannibalize myself cell
by cell.*
bone saws in her mouth.
the only difference between teeth of jaws
and saws
is mercy
(and she swallowed her mercy long ago).
her mouth was sandpaper
and she spoke like a carpenter’s hands:
rough palms,
tough pads,
a utilitarian artist
a crafter of dead flesh.
a mortician for dryads
and kodama.
the art and the artist
in lips
tongue
and teeth.
her mouth was sandpaper
and i brought mine to hers
again and again,
her bitten-rough lips
opening like doors to
purgatory.
less entrapment than addiction -
returning once more to nails and hammers,
hell’s blacksmiths below
heaven’s painters above.
coming back home
to the space between,
to bone saws
and a carpenter’s hands.
her mouth was sandpaper
and her voice was carpentry,
her teeth bone saws
her words
birdhouse walls.
her mouth was purgatory
but her hands
were hands.
her mouth was sandpaper.
i held her hand
and chafed my lips raw.
Mar 9, 2013
Mar 9, 2013 at 12:26 AM UTC
The sun tipping over the horizon
Lifts my lids each revolution of this Shady green sphere...
And for a few brief seconds
The fingers of sleep
Drag me back.
Warm pressure on my eyes,
Pooling, (re)opening them to the last
Paradise;
The only oasis where your eyes are not closed
And your bones are not dust somewhere
Mingling with the soil in Pittsburgh.
Just the same, I know you're the product now
Of some hypnagogic state;
Of the last traces of theoretical DMT swirling in my brain
As is leaves Morpheus behind in the shadows.
You're just the most beautiful hallucination
The truth in the chaos of dreams
Cluing me into what I've been denying
For 13 years.
Impossible that I've preserved you better
Than any mortician could have
In the recesses of my mind
You are a perfect replica
An unholy copy of the original
All creamy skin
And ocean eyes,
Full-lipped smile tipping somewhere between
Arrogance and joy.
"I'm gone," you say. "I'm dead."
Repeating what I already know
"I'm dead, I'm not coming back."
On repeat like the worst kind of ear worm;
A carousel of sound that dips and weaves through every filament of Unconsciousness.
Denial; like reaching out my hands
I shove against the reality, against the unreality
Against the prison sleep has woven
And crash forth
Damp and gasping
Like breaking the surface once more
Teetering over the horizon with the sun
Into the waking hell of another day.
The carousel makes another revolution.
See you on the other side tonight.
Nov 11, 2015
Nov 11, 2015 at 10:08 AM UTC
Society is a mortician.
It will try to make your life a coffin.
Then it will try to make you fit.
If you don't, it will gladly
cut off, your arms, legs and brain
so that you do.
Do not allow it. Be your full self.
Stretch your limbs; use your brain.
When the time comes, lie down and
stretch out on the rich earth whole.
Laugh at the mortician. Die like
a warrior, the same as you lived.
~mce
May 12, 2015
May 12, 2015 at 8:01 PM UTC
All of those identities that end in "t" and "r" and "n,"
make us feel god awful and self-conscious.
Singer, artist, writer, musician, mortician, poet.
Who entitles us to use them?
And it's true, your voice touches in between my shoulders,
and melts to the bottom of my stomach when you croon,
but you don't find yourself an apt enough player of the voice box.
And sure, painting the reasons why I woke from your dream,
might seem like I'm an artist, but I rather just say...
I enjoy painting.
And right, we like to etch words into books and alchemize
the desire to question into stories,
but we're just fans of reading.
And you know, when the air cradles the harmonies of your guitar
like newborn unicorns, I want to point and claim,
though you think you know too little to call yourself musician.
And yes, the way we lay our bodies to sleep every night sometimes hopeful we don't rise again,
is much like how we treat our desire to declare ourselves,
but that makes us only those who give the dead away.
And of course, my blood courses in order to stitch and weave worded thoughts like these together,
because they lighten our concerns and brighten our better qualities,
so of course,
yes,
I know,
Right,
Sure,
It's true,
I am a...
I might dabble in poetry, here and there. No big deal.
Apr 2, 2014
Apr 2, 2014 at 8:30 AM UTC
Something is wrong
Always
Confusion and hate
Maybe
Lost in bowels
Sloppy
Like I care
Mortician
Bring the blade
Seppuku
Nov 25, 2022
Nov 25, 2022 at 12:30 AM UTC
People out here thinking life ain't worth living
So they take a life.
I guess they find worth in killing
More worth in drug money
More worth in pride
I wonder how many folks died
Shot dead because of a side eye
It don't make you a man because you ride..
For your crew
It don't make you a woman because you lay on your behind ...
For your boo
I don't love the streets but I love the people in them
Locked in a mindset can't find there way out of the system
Forget the street rules!
The G-code!
The hemoglobin soaked street code
I'm not that guy.
Father in law behind bars.
My dad shot yeah he the one that died.
I will only die for Christ's sake
The one that died for me when I was ***** as a used ****** on cracked asphalt.
I owe the streets nothing!
Yet I must to tell them about the blood of Christ.
Understand if your blood covers the streets it does nothing!
Just death ..pain..a open chest.. Mortician's and Funeral Homes
In the streets everybody stiff stuck rigamortis
Jan 10, 2015
Jan 10, 2015 at 2:56 PM UTC
**the sighs in our chest that emanate from a different kind of
breast cancer**
wrote these words prior,
then, certainly uncertain of the exactitude of their meaning,
clearly unclear of their useable intention,
yet the too real wrathful sensations
that inspired their caesarian creation,
the sigh's very own exhalations,
floatations devices for the interned-no-longer emotions,
escapees via the crevasses of chest ribs splitting open,
return to glory thanking me for freedom given
let posterior eloquence suffice, let brevity guide
my self's interior diagramming,
lengthy explications and deep analytics, I leave to you,
the astonished medical examiner and the horrified mortician
chest ripped, my hand reinserted, the blighted scourges,
the abscessed cancers, the obsessive relentless cankers,
asking shamelessly why have I returned to the crime scene
*the sighs are air-borne, ready for air plucking,
all cloud seeded, deeded for poets to seize and commence,
to plant and invent, a mountain top trickle to a mighty
river of poems to be recovered and discovered,
unrehearsed and unleashed
but you and I have unwished, unfinished business,
as of yet unwritten, one last poem to honor our
mutually assured destruction,
for this day will be
rewritten differently*
Oct 14, 2017
Oct 14, 2017 at 10:11 AM UTC
Virginity
My virginity was bang, a brain against a glass-tinted window. It was child-locked doors and ax cologne. It was too much muscle and a 13 year old body to weak to tussle.
My virginity was a man who made **** seem like an art, the same systematic way the mortician dissects the cadaver. Striped from a name like i was nothing but a corpse
It was the bruises left for weeks. The ****** teeth marks left upon my once sacred body. It that deep voice with Alcohol on its breath.
Yes. My virginity was a ******* earthquake. It was 7 minutes of the worst kind of hell. 7. Where I stopped believing in heaven. Trust became the law, fear my bible. I watched as my foundations crumble. and I knew that this Earth was no longer safe to walk on. It was the aftershocks running down my spine and me, a vacant building constantly about to tumble
So here I am. 3 years later, standing in his rubble. mistaking a kiss for his fist. It's been panic attacks in grocery stores. It's been 3 years of hating myself more than anyone else possibly could. It's been 3 years of
Self blame
And the shadow of a girl I became
Unworthy is a word that takes up so much space
It was the carrying the scars of my last binge.
The night I convinced myself if it burned going down it must be holy water.
Finally Salvation
drinking so much I couldn't stand.
Drinking so much I could no longer stand myself.
I familiarized myself with the taste of concrete and forgot the smell of old books.
constantly looking for a new hook.
Blowing halos of smoking trying to make death look beautiful.
I found myself in a deep dark hole
Oblivion.. My only goal
Lately, It's been learning my body isn't an apology.
It's been learning that bravery cannot be measured my a lack of fear;
some times it takes a ******* soldier to look your demons in the eye and say.
This is my body.
I am the beautiful owner of busy breath.
I'm that shadow girl with a storm inside
No I am not that bruised soul in the empty bottle.
It's been 3 year of convincing myself that This world, it needs my voice.
It's been learning I am a miraculous dance floor of glittering molecules.
It's been learning that You will never have a greater opportunity to learn to love thy enemy, when your enemy is own holy, holy self.
Apr 1, 2015
Apr 1, 2015 at 8:42 PM UTC
This pounding in my chest
It hurts my love
It hurts so much
Because my mind well it's decaying
And what used to help has stopped
Everything has stopped
So I need you
I need you to do me a favor
Take my heart
And unravel the veins
Like you're untying your shoelaces
Then kiss me tenderly
Let me close my eyes
And weave flowers in my hair
(daisies if you can)
And tip the mortician so she does a good job on me
Then when my body turns cold
And my lips are sealed with glue
Just know in my final moments
I was thinking of you
So wipe away your tears and get rid of that frown
Cause baby I'll be happiest when I'm in the ground
Apr 24, 2018
Apr 24, 2018 at 5:01 PM UTC
run the halfway house.
the winos will be showered,
fed,
and then led
back
into infinite night.
they talk quietly to one another,
waiting,
and by the time
I have finished my 3rd cup of coffee
some of them are in the park
drunk already...
...eyes burning like a locomotives furnace,
eyes flutter,
a half spin,
the man kneels and then falls.
others just stand
and stare
as if already under the mortician's
knowing smile.
and yet,
some will rise
from bright mists at dawn,
cherubic and dew covered
survivors of the night's storm.
grim miracles
who will share a bottle with a friend
and then laugh
at the selective kindness of good men.
between the burning furnace and
the chill of the night
hungry strangers are waiting.
a new day begins.
all is quiet.
Jul 5, 2016
Jul 5, 2016 at 1:19 PM UTC
.
Three tears is all that I can almost shed,
I'm wound up tighter than any thread,
as you lay on white sheets upon the bed,
I can't help but think you look beautiful dead.
My hand would love to touch your skin,
my head is full of the most atrocious sin,
but you are so cold and won't let me in,
and how can a veil of lust be so thin.
You can not be any older than thirty,
the way your ******* curve is so **** flirty,
and my mind is full of images salaciously *****
you are so so tempting, naked and skirt free.
And even though I despair to caress you,
its pointless now to seek to impress you,
my job is to clean, arrange and dress you,
make you up to look just like the best do.
But oh! my lovely corpse I have a need,
to see you buried carrying my seed,
nobody will ever know, for secrecy I plead,
you will look beautiful in spite of my wicked deed.
© Pagan Paul (21/01/18)
Jan 23, 2018
Jan 23, 2018 at 8:13 AM UTC
He hates daylight with sense of a mole,
He has curtains all over his chambers, to preserve
His heart nocturnal, where he derives joy
As he does glory from his night shift
As a mortician at the city morgue,
Where I was deadly drunk one night,
And fallaciously declared dead by a nurse
And got dumped into this domain of the AG
Fellow drunkards who became sober to cry
For help out of the morgue, the AG clubbed
Them lethally to final death, forget of drunkardness
Another sick person un-convulsed back to life
He thrashed his skull with a menacing club,
Only two strong hits sent the misfortunate man
Back a really rigor mortis, finally dead,
I chose not to breathes loudly till dawn
When the dayshift mortician came on duty
I pleaded for his favour and sympathy,
He culled me out of death, I went home
Running swearing to myself never to drink again!
Jun 20, 2014
Jun 20, 2014 at 7:44 AM UTC
I told myself a day from tomorrow,
that I'd stop this pity and get along with sorrow.
It sickens me and leaves me here,
UN-guarded and filled with a craving like none before..
the needle it sinks in my skin as I slowly am embodied into clay,
morphing into the different sounds and feelings that illuminated the bare room.
Staring into my own face,
looking at the face of death with no regret.
I walk on day by day revealing this unnatural smile of mine for all to glance upon.
Put out of sight,
out of mind,
I can't find myself.
In the sympathy of thought that nestles the moon,
I am hiding here because of what I will be soon.
The next drug addict or ******
H E L P ?
G O D ?
A N Y O N E?
No one is there.
Thy creator left me in a dark place,
where my mind could never set free,
could never escape.
This is my destiny,
my fate.
Hurry! Don't anticipate before your timing is too late.
Somebody call the mortician,
somebody get him here fast,
because soon enough nothing will last.
Just the foggy memories of my decimated path,
It lay tangled at your feet,
I'm your aftermath.
The anarchist ******
Mar 1, 2013
Mar 1, 2013 at 2:17 PM UTC
the lanky mortician with wryly looking fingers, oh the poor boy.
The hospital asked me how the body should be cast.
Such a funny thought to wrap you up in white linens,
your favorite colour.
Before I say goodbye my dear Eugene,
"Do you find it all right, my dragonfly?"
I can hear you asking, "James why do you cry?,
Make the most of your life, while it is rife;
While it is light."
Before I watch your flesh go,
Shall we look at the moon, one last try?
Sep 14, 2015
Sep 14, 2015 at 7:41 PM UTC
We wear dead remains on our expression
It’s all in relation to the cohesive statement
Fashion is a coyote at six in the morning
A mortician’s incision at an open casket fashion show
A funeral waits at the end of the runway
Apr 24, 2011
Apr 24, 2011 at 10:01 AM UTC
The papers said she was a small-town girl
from Massachusetts, an aspiring actress with
the looks of Hedy Lamarr or Norma Shearer.
The boys, they liked her minced walk,
those black curls and tight black dresses,
But it was the smile that won you:
An aphrodisiac painted deep red.
The picture didn’t do her justice.
I examined her body on a cold slab on metal:
Black curls, upstairs and down, matted with
Dirt and blood. Body, cut clean in half.
I bent over to get a look at those eyes:
Death hadn’t yet stolen their blue.
Folks say she didn’t care for school, but studied
Movies religiously. She was determined
to be known by the world—one day,
With bags and ambitions, she fled
To California. Reporters called her a vagabond amongst
Other Lost Angels; no permanent address,
though her mother received letters every week.
When the cops brought her in to identify the body,
I pardoned the girl’s condition; I had not yet
Stitched up the sides of her mouth.
I hear the leeches got to the daughter first,
Calling up the poor mother
With some cockamamie story that her
Little Betty had won a beauty contest.
The mother answered their questions proudly,
Never the wiser, never know she was
Ghostwriting her own daughter’s obituary.
Betty’s pretty picture was soon plastered across
Headlines and the evening news:
I could still hear the mother’s shrill screams
From a few hours before. I had kept the girl’s
Severed body draped, to give her
Some dignity, but I couldn’t hide
her Glasgow smile.
Jul 14, 2010
Jul 14, 2010 at 6:32 PM UTC
The Haunting of the Ol' Fisherton Bay Morticianary, Pt. 1
The nights were longer, as though at bay...
It's time for the artist to make his way.
"It's a mighty profitable business,
isn't it Hugh?"
Said the mortician to his dog.
"These ones are old...
Almost as old as you"
As he worked up his corpse,
for its last and lonesome grog.
"Off to burial, this would see,
off with the other one,
whom ever was he...
Off with you too sir; old wasted chap...
Make for the wedding soon,
of woods and crap;
I shall expect a clean and smoothly slit,
to slip here this trap.. and finish it quick!
his final dance; adieu.. farewell..
Soon riddance will follow,
of you as well."
Yelled the mortician to the delving man,
To take over from here while still he can...
A.r. Bazian
Jan 26th, 2016
Jan 26, 2016
Jan 26, 2016 at 2:54 PM UTC
one two three
a loop in my head
i count my steps
to the grave
one two three
breaths in a row
faltering
atlas under a globe of grief
one two three
the mortician mutters
hitting the lever
a box in descent
one two three
relatives
trail off
weaving through the stones
one
matriarch in shambles
a perfect pietá
lingering by the hollow
two
a couple broken
separated
by the greatest door
three
wails punctuate her sentence
goodbye bill
I’ll always love you
Apr 12, 2016
Apr 12, 2016 at 2:39 PM UTC
i didn't know you quite well
i just knew you hated
yourself
and loved disney films
and musicials
(i hate musicials and disney)
we sat at the same lunch table
2013
i remember your cotton sleeve
wiping across the corner of my left eye
because there was a storm brewing in them
and it flooded
you talked of
that boys don't know
better
and told me to stay
strong
how can someone who is not strong themselves
encourage me to do something
that they can't even triumph
you fell ill around december
or was it november?
i can't remember.
you almost followed the footsteps
of your lost nephews (two and five)
why couldn't you absorb your nutrition?
was your destiny to see the mortician?
(no.)
but you left the hilly suburbs of ohio
to go where the sand storms
and the palm trees sway
and the salty bays lay.
alex, alexandria
(defender of man)
i still remember those sleepless green eyes
filled with defeat and woe
and yards of wavy tangled brown hair
that flowed.
Oct 22, 2014
Oct 22, 2014 at 7:59 PM UTC
I put on mascara today so you would find my corpse perfect
(all that existence is, looking beautiful for earthworms)
then realized that you could not open the tomb –
yes, the worst part of distance, the last person I see will not be you
(and the mortician will not know which dress is my favorite).
Only you, only you know about the burgundy lace
that we said makes me seem like a dwarf princess or psychic –
in it, I could call you from the past even when I am gone
you would be the king of every maggot delivering my messages.
I would eventually ask to be excavated (and if anyone says no,
please do not have mercy upon them, sweetheart –
wish that they catch the measles or chickenpox or insomnia)
so you could see the sallow skin I blanched even more just for you
the palace in my grave did not matter when you weren’t there.
May 6, 2013
May 6, 2013 at 5:14 PM UTC
the post-mortem will say:
sudden cardiac arrest
(medicine cannot quantify
death by a broken heart).
i thought it was sweet,
the arrhythmia you gave me
(at least the butterflies
dissolved harmlessly in acid).
you knew me, invasively,
a mortician's secret autopsy
(you counting my scars, ribs,
was it more habit than desire?)
curiosity is what killed me;
mine and yours, ill-matched
(i would have preferred cruelty
to your cool detachment).
the post-mortem has found:
i died of natural causes
(which makes you, my heart-
breaker, a force of nature)
Sep 3, 2018
Sep 3, 2018 at 7:15 AM UTC
a troubled little wisp of waxy death punches from my lips
(is it the exhaust from many thriving microorganisms ?)
there it is a clearly visible tiny cloud formation
(is this an indication?... the breaking down my over ripened form ?)
married also is its appearance in the bathroom mirror
(confirmation that it is no illusion)
i was quite casual about the event (thank you)
but not enough
to stop me noting it here ;
call it 'the death weather report'
it shall be journaled further
i already feel observed
as though by some bored student mortician
Feb 17, 2024
Feb 17, 2024 at 9:57 PM UTC
There was a Mortician I used to know
With a chin of whiskers and sallow teeth
He didn’t comb his graying tresses
“Moonlight commence your drip” muttered he
But his hair grew stringier and his ligature looser
A man ever dingy with mourning
Shrouded with death was his visage
A man of fifty, shriveled like a rose
If you spend lifetimes watching milk curdle
And leaves stiffen
Traces of mortality will wrinkle you the same
Acrid appealed to the Undertaker’s senses
Drank black coffee to match his hue
Used to cloud lucid skies, he’d wipe out the blue
None spoke to him but the drawing room mirror
Listen he didn’t to its clamor of tongues
For a reflection’s to blame for receding flesh
Thirty years conducting funerals
Built a morose man
Quietly he wept
Though a furrowed rose cannot
Thus his quietus was born
Aug 13, 2012
Aug 13, 2012 at 11:04 PM UTC