Tag: death
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Beautiful Flashes of Life
Grandma Clara knew this day would come,so she put on her favorite blue & white dress.She had been waiting for this, for a long time.Clara switched the television channel to the one her grandkids watched all the time.She pulled up her wheelchair, stowed it neatly in the corner. Clara didn’t want her son/grandkids, stumbling over…
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Hot Wax on a Wool Dress
After three days of black rags over mirrors,three days of the open coffin in the parlor,Nana’s eyes closed, unable to see beyond-Lena, needed to run around the backyard,holding the hand of the first living thing that would follow her around, round, round.She was wearing the last wool dress Nana knitted for her (a green, white…
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Mother Are You Proud of Me?
They tore your body apart.You died among walls of infusion boxes.On the television, the Pope riding by in his Pope mobile.Are you proud of mewhen I cry?Are you proud of mewhen I don’t?Peeking through the slats of the living room blinds,I discovered your body slumped in the reclining chair.Will I ever know the truth of…
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An Old Garden
(After Richard Aldington’s Aux Vieux Jardin)Today I found an unknown garden in the woods.I do not know who carved this still pool fringedwith reeds amidst a forest browning for winter.Who decided to protect it from the tearing air,tended it to suckle water from dark clouds.All I know, it blooms with great delight, apartfrom the diverse…
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Rainy Day
Only the rain moves,nailing the houses into their own coffins. In childhood daysthe rain sailed down alleys.merrily sweeping motley papers, leaves,once, a tiny pink shoe—everything, to the sea, a rollicking circus calliope. Now the rain, the iron rain,lets the sky place itstombstones onevery single roof.
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Juanito’s Dream
Juanito grew up with a velveteen rabbitin his hand and a gun by his side.On his sixth birthday his junkyard owning Dadgave him a clutch of rainbow balloons.He climbed the rusted skeleton of a Cadillac, held the beautiful Mylar to the sky and prayed to be taken to heaven.The answer was the sour tasting rain.On…
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Under the Tree of Knowledge
Let me lie here and knowwhy over this ground this apple tree makes a long shadowand a light sound.For a moment death will wait,but this tree will not,nor will it mourn for me when there is sweet birdsong all around.My sapling moment has passed, my winter comes and I have climbed and shaken every boughand…
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Talking Away
I use to think about grief,building loss on loss, sorrow on sorrow,into a silent groan in my bowelsof ever churning lamentsmourning for the comfort of dead faces.All the sorrow and lost infused my words. It leaked out to the white spaces betweenunwanted vowels and syllables : to the house gone, parts removed,friends lost, the broken…
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Rye Lane: Getting Past All the Ex-Misses
Plot via IMDB: Two youngsters reeling from bad breakups who connect over an eventful day in South-London. Rye Lane, streaming now on Hulu, is a romantic comedy that succeeds by breaking all the rules of the genre and dating. Don’t spend the date talking about your exes is the big one, especially if you want…
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Dust
I find it easier to collect dust than move it around from feathery place to place.Dust is history. It holds the flavors of myself.Dust contains my words.It sits on my mantle adding more specks every year,life upon life on death.I see God in its ashes—He is dust and Dust is everythingIt swirls in endless ribbons…
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Sunflowers Flash Bye
In my car, I speed by a field of sunflowers following the light as the sun follows them, their life with me over in the flash of an eye, leaving only remembered halos in the shadows of buzzing bees whose journey, like mine, will be over by day’s end.
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Masks Strolling Venice’s Square
A rogue with a stitched mouth steals bye,swiping a pearl from the porcelain womangazing adoringly at the moon-face lothario. The false Pope blesses the crying baptized child that Godfather death holds in his hands.The masks float along the Venice squaresinging dead languages, hiding their selvesin the faces of gods and goddesses sighing.
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Walking Her Bicycle Back Home, Alone
Oh, child of mine, I’ve come back toreclaim your most precious thing from that blue ravine off the stone road.I lack the steadiness and pulse of movementto ride it home.So, I walk it back totally alone now,remembering those first unsteady lessonsuntil you found the perfect balance to peddle this silver dreambeyond my steady support.I will…
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The Squirrel Holds Tight the Acorn
When I looked again, the squirrel with the acorn was gone, perhaps vanishing behind the trees.Minutes later, I noticed her gray shadow.She moved to me then ran the other way.In her fright, she did not notice the car, and the car did not notice her. For the driver, the squish could of have been another…
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Cup of Light
I watch the light filter through the sky, touch the grass. It moves thru the window forming a yellow light in the glass on the table. Barely glimpsed, it moves again, almost touching the room where you are dying.
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Raise the Red Lantern, Take Down the Blue Lantern
The wooden shutters must be flung opento scatter the doves on the ledge to the sky.Hang up that red lantern long reserved for all.Put it in the brightest spot to release the most joy.Take down that old blue lantern put up on the eaveswhen Mǔqīn (Mother) flower began to wilt in winter. for today, she…
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Walking the Dead Beach
1The beach evaporates into the clouds and on sandsbeyond hourglasses, I walk—under a dry and empty sky,a blue that doesn’t exist, a white that has died inside.The dark and light hereare not things. The beach is a negative of souls. I try to imagine a life before the dry,perhaps a lover,someone besides me,to sleep in…
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The Crying Old Woman on the Bank
An old woman in a Mantilla carries hernew sorrows. She wanders lost—knowing not enough Englishto understand and answer questionsShe needs to sell the familia silver to recover her drowned hijo from the river,but she is sunset to everyone she pleas to.
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To Know Guernica Is to Fall
He saw Guernica in front of him and knew what falling was in all its gray grace and white horror. “Jesus, how they huddle together like close trees in a savage wind,” he thought, noticing his phlegm falling into the acid of his stomach. By the time he left the museum dusk…
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The Boat Awaits
Silent boats await to take us all to distant shores.
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Death and the Maiden
She gathered lilies to her— Held them to the Lord of Sky until she fell away and he granted her eternal night.
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Magnolias
The Japanese Magnolias lean into the cicadas chirr,into the every shadows of the day,before returning back to the very open airthey keep to themselves before they die.
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New Year’s Eve Comes and Goes
A friend I’ve know for but a year came a knock, knock, knocking at my door.He was cold and thin, and even though he wanted in, I did not open the door.He was once such a grand delight but now he was so so such a bore. Knock, knock, knock, his knuckles rappedagain, again. I…
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Mask
The soul’s happinessis uncovered when the beautiful white death maskslips off the face.
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The Last Tree
The last tree sheds its leavesin the barren dry knowing the breezewill breathe its revival.
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Sheltered, I Am Now
No terror seedsin my soul. The gentledust of my mother remainsall around me. Her old comfortssnuggle away any regretsuntil our heavens meet. Not soon,but soon enough I will remain with you.Why will I decay in the crypt when only smoke can rise to joy?That cloudy mass that rises from burning,burns tears beyond the wear of…
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The Singing Honeyeater
The Singing Honeyeater fell following the shadow of my hand on the wall.Right wing coveringits breast, it fellin full song.In a splash of last rain,the shadow of my handit knew was not sky, it fell.And,in the speckled evaporation of a mute sky, its last notes fell forever inside me.
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Nourishment
The buried placenta knows not the suffering of the womb,only that it once nourished.
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Walking Along the Seashore Without My Mother
The old negative of her with her hair pinned backI hold up to the horizon and see it fade into the waves.It was the one taken through the filtered window of her black car,her face half in night and half in day.Behind, I hear the echo of the sand cave.In front, the roar of swirl…
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The Road to the Sea
When I was a young boy my mother drove us in a white Plymouth to a road that ended even with the sea. The last tenth mile was paved seashells mortared with beach stones, the low shoulders no higher than my ankles- the carapaces of turtles, crabs, lobsters boiled and eaten over a century. She…
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Getting It Right
I try on my death suit regularly, and even after my cancer surgery, it’s still too long in the arms and legs..This year I did manage to find a comfy pair of shoes in a size 9 1/2that don’t make my toes numb.in a few years I will come into a nice inheritance and will…
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The Box That Holds My silence
At bedtimeI sit in my chairand turn offmy long lived hearing aids,putting them in the pine box with the gold leaf claspand a brown phoenixcharred into the lidThe traffic outside dies,the rasping of my dog is silent,my wife’s snoring is muteand the world is so so quiet now. In the morning only the light streaming…
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The Lesson of Our Puddles
Oceans are formed from the dropping of our tears.and in it we must all drown,knowing only the cold and the slow driftingaway of our flesh.We watch our fathers live extraordinary livesbut die ordinary deaths.It sinks our hearts downin the gush of a thousandmemories past and memories to be named,into expectations of what was andwas suppose…
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Side Effects
In my dreams I ride bicycles. In life, I once knew how to ride them.Now I am old and side effects have my feet missing the pedals and falling down.
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Sixty Degrees and Clear
Sixty degrees and clear.She dies -morning hospice shiftwhile I’m getting ready to visit her.Waxen in her white bed,arms bruised and quiet now,mouth wide in a gaspas if in scream, as if sayingah, no! Both eyes closed,turned down for my visit,denied all further light,sky or even ceiling.I touch her hand. It iscold. It’s only beentwo hours.…
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Leaving Tranquility
Not far from the cove, the stones worn smooth from the tides weeping, the salted breeze, removedfrom all tranquility, is the grand windowed house. The ashes will be spread on the beloved soil,the October browning still green to cover this assembly of forgetfulness. The house awaits the noises of the feast,the jeer, the final clearing…
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The Cursing Stones
Ariana, adopted the old Greek ways, when Nikos died diving for sponges. She encased her curses into two lead stones: smuggling one into his coffin, dropping the other into Naxos deepest well. She made sure Nikos soul would carry her curse to the underworld before it ascended to heaven, or activated fully on the river…
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Washing the Corpses
–After Rainier Maria Rilke The washers have lived with death as they have with the lamp, the flame and the dark, the nameless rinsing of limbs, the even more unnameable nameless. without histories relative to them. Their sponges dipped the water then the silent throat, trickled rivulets on their faces, waiting for it…
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The Art of Dying
The Pandemic has closed the theaters and cinemas. On stage a lone actor commits suicide in the loneliness. On screen the two lovers run to each other against the march of soldiers. The actor’s death is an extravagant fake, a nod to the art of dying a good stage death. The…
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Obituary of Her Last Memory
Many say the last thing the dying see is the flap of dove wings or Jesus caressing their hair. Her hallucinations were full of Him smiling at her, speaking words she could not understand. And when I draped the blanket over her cold feet, crowned with the blue bruise of all her past…
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The Wave
The hospital gown they gave me is the same one with clouds my mother and friend once wore, a hand me down filled with the aura of grief and hope, of time and death. My name and date of birth are the only thing the nurses ask as I am led to the mold…
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Diary of Your Last Breath
December 3, 2019 She was displayed before me with her eyes closed and mouth agape, leaving me to wonder whether she died in terror or awe. Was her last breath the honest gurgle I’ve been seeing for the last few days, that I took comfort in hearing restart every time I called her name…
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Seeing 2020
I want to greet the new year with 20/20 eyes, knowing that cure dances on the edge of hope’s grave and that in this biblical year of flood, cancer and death, that grief is just a short term companion. Tomorrow time will step me away leaving only memory and the long walk to the…
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Oncology Nurse
Every touch is a devotion, every soft phrase a prayer to life, to continue living. – A nightingale, a dove gowned in heavenly blue a ministering survival chant. – Thank you and double checks are abundant. – They minister consistent kindness for they live among the blasted. – There is no sniping, no rivalries, just…
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A Dying Poet’s Final Sonnet
Bury me not in a high tomb of gloom on days sacred to all your lonely heart nor scatter my ashes in the pale moon on June’s or September’s early-late start. Mix me in with all my good beastlies‘ dust, one third reserved for Elsi’s sweet embrace, two parts crushed into diamonds that not…
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The Nacre of Cancer
I have no taste for whiskey, although it seems over the years I have developed a proclivity for cancer, for building the nacre into pearl. It’s funny how one can live with death scooted to the borders, listening to it rap the door with sub-audible gusts that only your dog hears and barks at.…
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Catacombs Know No Smiles
Catacombs are full of bones snuggling in the disgrace of others. Hipbones piled on top of skulls, the absence of lower jaws denying the departed a smile, the eternal existential joke of insulting the living with the knowledge of their ultimate end. Femur, skull, femur skull is the monotonous pattern of the Paris catacombs.…
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Last Ride on the Arkansas
On her last ride on the Arkansas river, she watched the world turn crooked, all the hickory shading yellow, their leaf tears forming sunny arrows in the flow, nuts falling in the glide, bringing smoker memories of hams cooked under their roast, red maples tapped for their syrup, the unharvested loblolly pines dropping their branches…
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Death Is Like No Movie I Have Ever Seen: The Trailers
At the Miracle my young brother saw death for the first time in a shark called Bruce, Jaws swallowing the onscreen boy on the raft in a chum wave that rippled from the light, a death that drenched every body in the shock of a nature devouring everything it sees; in an illusion real enough…
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I am deaf and not your simile
I am deaf not deaf, not small d death as some people like to say, but little d as in leaf, as in small l life, even though, you have to drop the l and add the d, for all of us to get and end there, although neither is usually capitalized unless it refers…
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Death is like no movie I have ever seen: the commercials
The movie of my death has not been made but it will suck, get O stars, a thumbs down, the bad final review no one will ever see or care about, not because the life wasn’t glorious- it was- but because death robs life of glory and action, and movies are called motion pictures for…