A Touch of Death

Certainly you remember death
I recall your wedding day
Bridegroom that you were, adorned in black

Your faceless bride, hollow. Veiled.
The smell of rot
Laughing through cracked yellow teeth
You pledged your love in silence

Six guests danced the pallbearer’s waltz
for you both. It was your song after all.
And was followed by a funeral dirge
Heard by no one

Oh! The honeymoon suite!
That splendid one room chamber
But they forgot to embalm you
So you did it yourself
And spent the next four years perfecting your skill

And when you were good and ripe
You split open spilling loneliness
from your gut until you were drowned
I forget how we marked the passage of time

One hundred and twenty credits I think
was what we needed for that psychology degree
But by then we’d been dead for so long. Remember?

By then you could recall effortlessly what
the business end of a gun felt like in your mouth
The smell of black powder
Thank god for cowardice
You only ever danced with her

Dennis Tkon Copyright 2007