OUR FUNERALS FOR SUMMER

My hair crumbles,
My skin defies.
My teeth work small magic, devolving.
My brain spits, it winks and it levies.
Mine is the body that knows enough
to run itself through the rote of devastation.
Mine is the body that will expel its own heart,
and will knot and swell its own flesh into tumors.

You should expect it, says my daddy,
and he's kissing goodbye to his brain,
he's spitting candies into my shoes.
You should expect it, says my grandpa,
petting my forehead and laying down
into the grass, into the dirt,
into the city I would run away from.
You should expect it, says my grandma,
beating her sons, wringing her hands,
loving supremely.
You should expect it, says my maw-maw,
massaging her breasts alone,
a fleshy adulteress,
a master of abandonment.

I turn the locks on all the doors
and secure the windows.
There I am,
in the dark that does not know
what will happen to me.
There I am!
The adulteress.
The beater of sons.
The loving and the loved.
The quiet oaf marching toward hysteria.
The cynic does not know how to pray
to anyone but herself.

I pray sweetly to my body,
and kiss my hands like two popes,
but I can still see it just fine.
My legs marry one another and then crumble,
meeting my hands as a bed of ashes.
When the smoke clears,
all of my scars have blown away.
Finally it's quiet in my head,
but I'm not there to enjoy it.
********************************
I submitted this one before for everyone to read, but I thought I'd give
it one more shot. Clearly this poem is about death, the end of life, the
way our bodies give way to make room for the next life. I wrote it after
losing someone very close to me, it sort of evoked those emotions of
what things will be like for us all, as we're all on the same path in
life really.

Penned by my hand on the 5th of Artificium, in the year 533 AD.