A Variation Upon Father John Misty's "Ballad Of The Dying Man"

He is unsure at this point if the soft pings and dings

Which inflict themselves upon his ears

Are courtesy of the wired-up grotesqueries

Stuffed cheek-to-jowl by his bedside

Or from the ubiquitous phone perched forlornly next to him

(Even at this stage, he has his inevitable newsfeed,

And he imagines he will be tagged in Facebook posts

Long after he has been exorcised

From the concerns of this workaday world)

Chronicled nattering of people

Tethered to him in the most tenuous of manners,

Or the fifteen or so seconds of flashing come-ons

Purveyed to capture what passes for our attention

On those three-inch billboards

Without which our very existence

Would have only the most speculative of meanings.

 

As he totters toward the final reckoning,

Remaining breaths perhaps few enough

To be counted upon his desiccated fingers,

He would, though he has nothing left to pawn,

No collateral left to barter upon,

Give all for just one more trip around the sun,

Even though he remains nonplussed by the notion

That we leave as we arrive,

Bereft of clues or whys and wherefores,

Not unlike those came before us,

Whose weathered and indecipherable stones

Stand as mute sentinels as some staid convoy

Brings our pitiable refrain to a full stop.