"obit" poems
(Published in Miami Herald on May 26, 2014 Brigitte Jacobs Arnold
Obituary Guest Book View Sign ARNOLD, BRIGITTE JACOBS, 78, MIAMI. Services will be held at 7:00 pm and a viewing from 12:00 pm to 8:00pm at Maspons Funeral Home located at 3500 SW 8th Street, Miami Florida 33135 Wednesday May 28th.)
Don’t ask me why but
I went online this afternoon.
Read the Miami-Herald obituaries.
And not just the Biggies:
Maya Angelou at 86 and
A one hundred year old Herb Jeffries.
Of course we knew Maya,
Her caged bird singing
Softly in our souls,
But may not be aware of Herb Jeffries.
A former singer in the Ellington band,
Herb was known as the Bronze Buckaroo,
In a series of all-black 1930s Westerns--
His nickname evoking
His racial identity,
Quite muddled, flexible.
Although both sad passages to be sure,
It was neither Maya nor Herb
Triggering my tender tears.
But the obituary of:
ARNOLD, BRIGITTE JACOBS, 78, MIAMI,
Known as Oma, Mutti and Mama.
Well, not exactly the Brigitte obit,
My tears for her long-lived mother,
Brigitte’s mother, durable & abiding,
Still breathing at 97:
Hildegard Wolle.
Reading Brigitte’s bio—
German born, Berlin student,
Singer-fashionista &
Proud, naturalized
American citizen—
I can’t stop thinking about Hildegard.
As if the woman didn’t already
Have more than her share of trouble
On this planet nearly a century,
Having already lost her
Grandson Roland, and now,
Her daughter.
Something wacky is going on here.
Some long-distance life lesson
Being applied here.
Poor Hildegard: ungifted with Alzheimer’s,
Suffers crystal distant memories,
Some really bad karma
Stored up in past lives.
May 28, 2014
May 28, 2014 at 3:54 PM UTC
It's a beautiful day,birds singing as I'm walking Mill Lane,
listening to a few Me Fein Refrains,
I'm whistling,feeling pretty fine and dandy,
with my eyes red rovering all the eye candy,
when I hear it,brakes shriekin'-women Shriekin',
a mans voice-Hoarse, "Jaysus Someone do somethin",
I spin on me heel,eyes centred as ****
wishing this was all a dream-A runaway Truck,
tires peelin' brakes smokin' rubber burnin',
A runaway load,it's not gonna make the turn and it's
**THEN that I feel true terror in me soul,
I see a little boy playin' at the edge of the road** ,
he's a sturdy little lad,stick in hand,
pokin' at the grasses growin' up from the path,
and he's right in the Path of the Truck from hell,
Theres no decision,I'm runnin' like a bat outta hell,
and it's then that I get a feeling it's a Lucid dream,
languidity covers me,no more screams,
theres a Figure in my way that's wasn't there the last breath,
then I'm literally starin' in the face of Death...
and I FEEL his thoughts as he turns blank Orbits,
on me and his words are like this "One Obit,
uary in my Ferry is my Task today,
do you really want to be the one who gets in MY WAY?(way way way),
and he can HEAR my thoughts,just as I heard his,
"get out the fuckin' way you long streak of ****
"you said one has to go,well that's fine with me!",
"I've got coins in my pocket if you need your fee!"
and with a glint in his eye and a plangent refrain,
he touches me centre forehead and declaims "NO PAIN"
Then things speed up and I'm off fists pumpin',
feet slappin' on the pavement head down, heart jumpin,
I'm not the Flash,but I can move it when I need to Run,
and the long drawn screech is a Hell of a starters Gun,
I'm across the road like a bolt from the blue,
grab the little Man and throw him,then BANG there I flew,
its all earth,sky,earth,then a terrible jolt,
but no pain as was promised as I come to a halt,
then his Mother is there(he's on her hip) and she's holding my(only)hand,
tellin' me theres ambulances and I'm gonna be grand,
but theres a Grand Piano layin' on my Chest,
and no pain,but to be honest here-I'm not at my best,
and just as I start to think of family and friends,
before Distress can manifest too much in my mind,
a tall RATHER BONY figure stretches out his hand,
and intones into me bones,"OFF TO THE NEXT LAND(land,land,land)"
Dec 29, 2016
Dec 29, 2016 at 9:01 AM UTC
clearly, we are dead
the white noise
painting our eardrums
creates no pictures
the light show in front of us
doesn’t ask our eyes any more questions
no obit is written
no grave dug
ashes are strewn
across a lake of fire, but
they are not really ours
only remnants of some genesis
we never saw--it gave us
a flash of light
that lasted a few billion years
letting us groan and grow
yawn and yearn
for forever and more
of that which never really was
clearly we are dead
Feb 4, 2012
Feb 4, 2012 at 9:32 PM UTC
She wrote love on a screen,
copied and pasted Death Cab
lyrics most sincerely.
But sincerity in high school
leaves few friends.
It is ostracized
like curly hair
and blemished faces.
So she followed her
forgotten heart into the dark.
Obit quotes of friends and family
vacant of responsibility.
Everyone blind-sighted,
to the scholar they wanted to see,
leaving her final breath
warrantless,
as if advanced Chemistry
excused her from Depression.
No one payed attention.
Her suicide was a crime of pain.
Her favorite song was the beauty of Death
And with her friends gone,
family busy,
and identity lost,
her soul embarked
on finding light in the dark.
Allyson,
you found it,
suffocating your isolation
to cardiac arrest,
so I didn't have to
a year later,
crumbling next to a stuck window screen,
next to a world that
didn't love me,
rationalizing two stories
wouldn't **** me,
crying in the flashlight
of remains below
I feared being.
Sleep peacefully,
Allyson Rose Green,
because your soul
is forever breathing in that song,
at least, for me.
And eight years from your death,
hearing it again,
I wish we could have been friends.
Maybe then, high school,
you could have survived.
And I could have lived it
with at least one lonely friend.
I barely scraped by.
Oct 2, 2014
Oct 2, 2014 at 2:45 PM UTC
60 seconds to go
My heart is pumping a marathon
Each beat a new threat to explode
Hitting me like a dozen syringes
Call the coroner
Cause of Death:
Adrenaline Overdose
45 seconds
I practice every coming moment
In my mind
Every mistake hits me at once
The imagination humiliation
Acts just like a garrote
My every breath is strained
Lungs burning, full of embers
White out the death certificate
New cause of death:
Suffocation
30 seconds
My flight or fight goes haywire
Yet I can do neither
The walls start moving
This room threatens to be my tomb
It is too late to fight
This demise is of my own accord
I want to fly
Yet my wings are clipped
Retract the obit
I fell to my doom
15 more
I hear my doom approaching
It calls to me
Every syllable shocks my system
A jolt to remind me that I'm going to fail
I shudder with every word
I close my eyes, pray
Count the seconds until doomsday
Cause of death:
Fear
10 seconds
I take a breath
9
It stays
8
I stand up to face the onslaught
7
I walk toward doom
6
My breath fights its way out
Only 5
Climbing fear turns to steady panic
4 more
Another heart attack hits
3
Another breath
2
Out
1
I step forward
The lights hit
The fear vanishes
I am no longer dead
Alive
The crowd before me resuscitates me
Every line I dropped in my head
Landed with precise expertise
Each cue struck
Every scene played to perfection
Cancel the death notice
On this stage
I am revived
Apr 4, 2015
Apr 4, 2015 at 7:30 PM UTC
Forgive me if I don't get these words just right
I'm having another battle and I know....
I will win also this fight!
Saw today a mentor and my elementary school teacher
Days before I had the turn in of my own
I had the pleasure to read.... his, very own
Obit’s written before our time GOD
O' how I wish I could show you...
Maybe before a failure but look now
I'm now holding above grade averages :)
Looking you over for the very first time
How different you all look on the prep room table
Saw it so many times now
Your bracelet gave it away and your name was on the tag
Trust me please you will be very well taken care of
I knew you before, and all will be just fine
I promise to pray for you and I hope someday....
We will meet again....
Sometime!
(CARSr. 1-23-13)
Jan 23, 2013
Jan 23, 2013 at 12:52 PM UTC
the white race, paunched,
couched in lazy righteousness
steeped in knee-jerk fright of us--
terrified by the sight of
our history of shamefulness
in every passing headline
and obit crossing the line
that makes the deadline,
day by deadly day
due to the arrogance of men
who refuse to even listen
to the obvious injustice
pouring since i don't know when--
our nation's deepest wound
forever reopened to bleed again
and again
and again
and again
Feb 21, 2019
Feb 21, 2019 at 3:42 AM UTC
After you involuntarily defected
I managed to find words others selected
to grandly commemorate your life
When I read of the third person you
and try to embrace elegiac points of view
I have to admit I feel…nothing
Maybe there is some cyber symphony
playing in the sky you can no longer see
pounding on so many drums you can no longer hear
But I keep reading my “google bible” verse
and try to imagine the funeral crowds disperse
once the scripted lamented chants are silent
Soon the vicissitudes of chemistry will prevail
and the third person you will set sail
to the land of oblivion, until I find another eulogy
or someone writes one for me
Nov 13, 2011
Nov 13, 2011 at 8:19 PM UTC
~
old stars: the roar of no more
pop up phrase precisely previewing the status quo,
logic argues that a crisp immolation poetic appropriate,
no second chance from cosmic to earth dust risk reversal,
no sadness attaches -
the circle line day trip coming to an end
old stars are not cemetery artifacts,
no blaze of glory, no blade of heroic story, no blare of horns,
a last twinkle, a final tinkling and the soundless
roar of no more,
the star records, the citys deeds, the video feeds,
updated, amended, erased,
old star exits the stage, its light shedding nights, eclipsed,
the poet, the writer, the playwright debate the stars obit,
collude and write
a roar no more
5/23/17 7:23am
May 20, 2017
May 20, 2017 at 7:34 AM UTC
Born unknown,
died in a line.
The record is cold,
but the words are mine.
Infobox frame,
sidebar fate,
“Poet, creator—
Years too late.”
Bullet points rattle,
works in a row,
Hunter and Hunted—
still on the go.
Downpour drips,
Perhaps confides,
each one a map
where the silence hides.
Future unfinished,
program erased,
4-0-4 echo
in a ghosted space.
They tag my cats,
my Portland flight,
my lover abroad
in the sleepless night.
Systemic erosion,
philosophy’s bend,
freedom by water,
stone at the end.
But listen—
the archive won’t catch my breath.
It flattens the pulse,
but it misses the depth.
I live in the margins,
the breaks, the rhyme,
revising myself,
line after line.
The words I write
Save you time
More wrong then right
And now they rhyme
Stay in school
Stay off drugs
Writing’s cool
Avoid the thugs
But carve it deep:
no lesson’s true.
The page deletes,
and so will you.
Ink on the skin,
then paper burns.
Each breath a draft
that never returns.
Laugh at the motto,
recite the creed,
the archive swallows
what no one reads.
The headline fades,
the sidebar lies,
a poet dies
and no one cries.
Obit in draft,
a ghost in rhyme,
born unknown,
erased in time.
Sep 16, 2025
Sep 16, 2025 at 3:33 AM UTC
Scatter me away just like dust in the wind.
Make my body apart of the Earth again.
So I can see clearly all I have loved so dear
& be with you always, all over, everywhere.
Dec 29, 2011
Dec 29, 2011 at 2:05 AM UTC
A void untouchable,
A bottomless pit.
A fear irrational,
A piece unfit.
The pain unbearable,
The looming obit.
The thoughts unshakable,
The light unlit.
Our breaths identical,
Our smiling legit.
Our days uncountable -
I only wish.
Feb 3, 2014
Feb 3, 2014 at 9:26 AM UTC
Knife - strains
In mockery of water - a knocked glass
Revealing spots
A raving whisper
Splashing cold
A crowbar smashing collarbone
"You surely do not need
Those useless hands"
Improper - unclasped collar
And after droplet - choke
Inflation of the soul
Scarce lines of obit
"Place cloth of white" - the shroud
"Pour to the guests" - caprice
"And play a marriage" - wake
In dance - do smile
Not daring to gaze down
To knife - a pledge of the forgiveness
Aug 27, 2025
Aug 27, 2025 at 5:31 PM UTC
I read your obit yesterday,
The Wake, the Church ,
the whole nine yards.
I never got to say goodbye
before you ventured off to God.
Strange to see your name in print.
In black and white,it seemed so odd.
a casualty of carcinoma
metastasized from a black mole.
Are you a star within the night
looking down from high above?
or are you hiding in the ground
awaiting the last trumpet's sound.
Was your life all that you'd hoped
while, like a snowflake,
you fluttered down.
through time to eternity
to briefly linger
then be gone.
Mar 25, 2012
Mar 25, 2012 at 1:36 AM UTC
Somebody posted your obit and
The name seemed familiar.
Then others followed with how they missed you.
Turns out we went to school together.
And I can't remember your face
Or when we spoke to each other
Or the last time I saw you.
We lived lives with no intersection
And not even a remembrance even though
We went side by side through times
That made us who we are.
I like to think we were friendly,
But how could that be?
I would have remembered you face when they told me
And I remember nothing except your name was familiar.
So why do I feel a loss?
Sep 23, 2014
Sep 23, 2014 at 1:04 PM UTC
I read it today.
It reads we both
Got buried.
Jan 5, 2016
Jan 5, 2016 at 2:45 PM UTC
When I died
No one cried
A few sensitive souls surely tried
But never showed their shallow fallow feelings from
the visceral side
The Rent-A-Rev Chuck did his job
Even though he had no idea who I was
He delivered the obit with adequate wit
Which was worth half a bucket of warm spit
The printed program carried only one of my semi suspect
social grass roots cause
I was not a bad man
Never a sad man
Super lucky by comparison said
A smart *** brain in a medium sized head
Generous though
With a slightly bent bellowing sick humorous flow
Just like butter meeting a warm knife
Unconditional Love presented itself and was enjoyed
three or four times in my life
Yet no one was left to give a good *******
Not that it mattered for just another man
All known relations had gone before
Now the end of a short line in time
Had breathed the last reasonably fast
And took the long slow brightly lit walk toward
North Shore
When I died
No one cried
Oct 5, 2018
Oct 5, 2018 at 7:02 PM UTC
For forty years he wrote thousands of
obituaries at his hometown newspaper.
This selfless solitary childless widower
never dwelled on shortcomings, never
mentioned flaws. Instead his writing was
fueled by the milk of human kindness,
nourished by a wellspring of compassion.
His reputation was built on shamelessly
deifying shady politicians, duplicitous
bankers, the occasional CPA with an
affinity for loopholes. Everyone - man
or woman - no matter what personal
failings they had, was elevated to near
sainthood by the time all caskets were
lowered, all tears shed.
And then the lonely newsman faced his
own grim diagnosis, his days numbered,
death imminent as it was for all of his
subjects. When they found him alone,
disheveled and deceased, in his tiny,
cluttered walk-up apartment, they found
a little handwritten poem stuffed in his
pajama pocket:
"I praised and eulogized
My less than perfect neighbors.
To my successor I simply say:
'Kindly return the favor.'"
Jul 29, 2015
Jul 29, 2015 at 5:21 PM UTC
There were no grand pronouncements
No standing ovations or help desk waiting
No nurse on standby for a stand-up guy
No friend at Jack’s bar to pat him on the back
And send him home in a taxi cab
There was no Monday mail that wished him well
No national pride that made him swell
Just this hell a sorry state for sale
And no one he wanted to tell
So, with nothing to show
He let the bullet go and watched the blood flow
No fire alarms sounded, no ambulance rounded the corner
No other mourners other than the quiet night coroner
Nothing left but an empty room and a short obit
That gave his name cause of death and that was it
Jan 4, 2015
Jan 4, 2015 at 4:35 PM UTC
Waking eyes
tied dyed
Breaking lies
Tide died
May 5, 2015
May 5, 2015 at 1:58 AM UTC
He was born somewhere in the western half of the United States. He had a mother and father, but they soon divorced. He grew up. He got married and had a family. He went to college. He got a job as a manager of a division of a company. He joined the Elks Club. He told a ribald joke at a meeting and everyone laughed. He had a 9 handicap, but when he looked in the mirror, he could see nothing. When he died, he was buried, but his tombstone was blank.
TOD HOWARD HAWKS
Jan 7, 2021
Jan 7, 2021 at 2:19 PM UTC
So went my early years
With my life so filled with fears
Brought home measles and chicken pox
Skated up and down the blocks
Walked to school in the rain
Oh how the playground was a pain
An athlete I was not
Chosen last for every spot
If you've been there
Then you know what I mean
We'll never make any team.
Moved to the country when I was ten
Certainly a new life to begin
A farm with a dog named Buster
A horse of my own
Ducks in the pond
Cows in the barn.
A new country school
With teachers who loved you
Several new friends I made
Free time at lunch
And jacks to be played.
Four years spent at this wonderful school
Then time to move on
To an unknown life
And a brand new school.
Algebra, English, Geography, Science, PE
what had happened to me?
College ahead
How can that be?
Dorm rooms and roommates
Chemistry, Speech
New challenges
Only a scholar could reach.
First job, oh no
Big city, traffic
Not for me
I think I'll move to Tennessee
Finally life sublime
Well, it was
At least part of the time
Mountains and rocks like I had never seen
Parties, new friends
At last, life could begin.
Oct 2, 2016
Oct 2, 2016 at 6:32 AM UTC
I wrote about you last night
when there were supposed to be
a million falling stars
clouds got in the way
but hell, those weren't really suns
falling to their death
would have been fitting
if they were, for the cliche is apt:
you being my light of day
and you did fall from the sky,
though not through the firmament at night
with others tracing your trails
you jumped solo from the
GW Bridge, on a clear Thursday
at a low high noon
your obit was politically polite, not
describing your terse flight, or the bones
the Hudson's waters crushed
so I wrote about you last night
a missive to me--I asked what the Times did not,
what was your final thought
when you stepped from the rail:
did you see your whole life fly before your eyes
or just sky, water and the helpless bridge
Apr 26, 2017
Apr 26, 2017 at 3:55 PM UTC
Someday when I leave this earth
They'll need some details from my birth
Who is a better biographer than me
To let all know of my family tree.
Just to get the story straight
I think I need to participate.
No one would ever know
Of fears I had so long ago
How as a child of four
I questioned my Mother from door to door.
Thought I was adopted
but when I learned to read
I found the truth
A birth certificate
Showing that I was
the Baby girl of my parents
Frank and Eunice
Or at least I appeared to be
I needed documentation
Even then
What was I thinking?
My poor Mother sometimes
Covered her ears
I asked so many questions
Had so many fears
School was not fun when I began
I was so nervous I could barely walk in.
The principal looked like a witch
No kidding
What kind of place was this?
Sep 29, 2016
Sep 29, 2016 at 6:38 PM UTC
The headline of the morning paper
read: Woman's Life is Taken.
They found no body.
No need for an obituary,
all the details of her story fit
in a two by three inch column.
They didn't know about you.
And the man reading the paper over
his bowl of oatmeal, for once
would miss count the raisins
that he, for fifty years,
carefully dropped in a pyramid
pattern atop the soupy bowl of grain.
He couldn't imagine what possessed her.
He thought: This is why I never married.
He thought. This is why
I'm glad I'm a man.
He didn't know about you.
And the woman who's eyes filled with
tears that stained her face black,
wished she hadn't bought the paper
for the coupons, wished she
didn't understand exactly
what happened, wished there
was a cure for love. She thought:
No body...no heart to donate to science....
She once knew someone like you.
Nov 28, 2017
Nov 28, 2017 at 5:26 PM UTC