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

1 Gypsy crime of Charles Manson cut the long locks of Holy Bible
strong man Samson; another turned water into wine & cake lace in-
to a vine that was stringier than Debra Makel's deadly baling twine.