Planning a Funeral

If you could plan - and attend - your own funeral, what would you want to see?

If a part of my person, some salient portion of my soul,

should survive my physical demise,

if, despite horrid torrid thoughts, ardent convictions

in godless realities and real delusions,

some rueful ration of my soul survives,

it would have a windfall of words to say:

No grief at funerals.

Desolation distress, companions in consciousness -

feelings which must become friends through exorcise and exercise -

receive no request to flaunt at funerals

-   no grief at funerals.

Wine at funerals.

Let Dionysian drink rain; summon deluge and downpour of s****y antidepressants

on attendants who acknowledged - or didn’t -

a depressed man’s desperate attempt at damaging his disordered mind

anxious to blame an insanity that never arrived

-     wine at funerals.

Song and dance at funerals.

Ignorant imams and rabid rabbis rejoice in ruining celebrations of life

with arbitrary exclusions and afflictive exultations

Salaat-ul-Janaza discarded for drugs and Banana

Brain, stomping to stupid electronic sonic salubriousness

is there anything better?

Uncle Spike, stab at heartstrings even as a tear rolls down the eyes of my non-existent ghost

-       song and dance at funerals.

No prayers at funerals.

Prayers, useful only for ones without a use for it,

the dead, the non-existent

Funerals exist for the living, giving flight to jubilation at a life lived and ended,

and feeling fear, the ghostly right hand of the grim reaper

as it rakes down your mortal manhood...

No! No prayers at funerals which are, you know,

places for pretentious poets to perform their art,

a place where the Alexs and the Nates disarm and depress and amuse

our artistic selves which slumber in arctic shells amidst searing suns

which fail to break through…

-        no prayers at funerals.

Reviews

[DiskartetHaraya]

Admiring this poem's project. Irony is its greatest strength. It stands out from other "it's not regrettable until it's too late" pieces because it is a lot more concrete.

Though it doesn't go into explicit detail about its context, as a reader it's enough a reveal for me that all these very real things--for people such as the persona--really beg for a reconsideration--not for people such as the persona but for people who have yet to "pass on".

Another aspect of the poem that works for me is the beginning--where the persona is introduced. For me it makes the poem more powerful than if it went directly to what the persona thinks (i.e., the rest of the poem). It lends authority to the mouthpiece of the poem. After all, we listen most to what people say when they are dead.