FRIENDS TOWARD THE END

Since I’d avoided being dead before today
the mortician’s florid face found me befuddled,
mortified really at his schoolboy
charm, hanging jowls gelatinous flab,
and mama’s boy demeanor as he stood
at the head of what was recently me
laid flat as cold fish on a hard stone slab.

I began to soak in the attention, his detailed ways
as he pumped strange fluids into my inert innards
and licked his chops while my wan complexion
colored up pink and dessicated tissue plumped
quite nicely,

Yes, I do think,
thanks to his two months of instruction
at the Kansas School of Mortuary Science
and the encouragement of blue haired Aunt Peb
who presided over an army of funereal folks raising the dead
day after day in this flattened state where life, death
and the dance of destruction often forgot which was which,
who was who, why all this disruption?

We became fast pals, the mortician and me,
his touch was gentle yet firm and his sen-sen breath
lovely so pleasant, and I must that if I’d known before
how nice a time there were to be had in the lazy land
of Mr. Morpheus….
you get my drift, the haze of death ain’t too bad,
in spite of the corruption of flesh on time’s
tapped out fingertips.

Tomorrow night, he whispered tenderly to me,
is the memorial service for friends and family.
I suppose I’ll be dashing in my red tie blue suit
and only we’ll know I’m barefoot underneath,
we’ll get through the viewing, tearful gazes, elegies,
then he’ll load me in the back of his pitch black van,
hoist sandwiches, dried fruit, a thermos of coffee
ghostly white with cream,

Enough just for two and off to Michoacan
we’ll thankfully flee charting our fresh destiny
as chums on the road like Kerouac and Dean,
without the pot, wild chicks or uplift of speed.