Of Being Dead

Like a post-coital cigarette

on a scorching midsummer twelve noon,

memories of mine will wither away,

too fast to fathom. I’ll know not

of god’s wondrous plans, know not

if I will ever fornicate. Forbidden hooch will ache

for my liver, like a working girl watching

the murky bylanes, hoping for her favourite frequenter.

But hooch is warm, her bed cold.

For I did frequent her, but cannot no more.

Strays found a kindred spirit in me.

They’ll loaf around the garage,

whiffing the cigarette ends, hoping for freshness

that’ll never be. Twitching at empty spaces,

the strays will wake from the reveries

of my distant whistles. How distant they know not.

Bosom buddies will raise a glass or two,

the true brethren, reminiscing the fallen one

till the water rings from whiskey glasses turn dry.

They’ll miss me not for long.

For now they have the hooch,

but the hooch will have them soon.

Everything will pass into decrepitude,

the Chevrolet, and the old trailer too.

Bleak winters may hide them,

from prying eyes, shrouding their perpetual abandonment.

But spring will cast the snow away, betraying them,

exposing their forlorn existence. As for me,

I’ll be a flight safety instruction nobody listens to,

a bitter core of an apple everyone discards,

a seat belt they’ll wear under duress.

I fret not, for I’ll be a convenient lesson

for my languid relatives,

to teach their little delinquents;

of fugacious life, of brazen apathy,

of freewill melancholy,

of being dead.