Please Do Not Feed the Birds

5 June 2014

At the starting point of my funeral procession march reads
A sign embossed in gold: PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE BIRDS.

"The Village Idiot," "The Town Fool," "The Mute":
These epithets to be engraved on my gravestone are crossed out
One by one by the mortician because he knows me best: Because
He knows me not at all.

My body lying supine bathes in fluorescent spotlights---
A precursor to ensuing cremation---
And is wheeled to the finish line and
Dumped vertically overboard into
The cadaver-sized oven--
A castle fit for a queen, though I never was one before my death.

Nobody but the woodland birds comes to call, to
Peer through the cracks
Between door and wall, and
Hover lullabying me to sleep.
The final
Death rattle ascends from my parted lips---
My first and last words!---
And the flames crawl through my legs.
But as the fire nears my chest and
As the singe marks crumble black,
My hand reaches up the door and
Two tepid eyes stare back.

Reviews

[Delmar Cooper]

Thanks for sharing this; "All true stories end in death." or so I have heard it said. The big problem with reporting about death is lack of data, which I am not offering to provide at this time. Anyway, I like it, although I don't follow it all the way. Probably my old impaired synapses. I do think the first line is awkward and twists the "readereye" out of its socket about a half millimeter. Not the part in caps though- I really like that part.

A nit about "comes" vs "come" arises to be picked. I vote for "come." My eye stopped at "My hand reaches up the door" as in the itsy bitsy spider that climbed up the water spout? Or, as reaches up to the door, or as something else entirely? Whose eyes? And in what way tepid?

Thank you for this.
Cooper