There’s Something About a Funeral

By Metacognizant

There’s something about a funeral
to boggle the skeptical mind
reaching out alone
in the stealthy manufactured silence.
No one dares to live
to stir the deep eternal jealousy
of the vividly moldering corpse.
When we have no memory
anymore, then we shall have no death
of memory, no tears
for fallen tombstones and defiled monuments
and that ivy we have propagated
which like all our offspring will die.
There’s something about a funeral
to catch observant breath
and hold it out of arm’s reach
where it cannot refresh a throbbing brain.
Distraught we gasp for life.

There’s something about a funeral
about the shiny mechanistic black
of the old mourners and the creaking hearse
to anchor itself in the back room
of every recollection
whose doors are not locked
to stimuli and thought.
And the funeral party
eating bagels and cream cheese to console
bottomless guts with sustenance
takes place in that room
even as the walls fall down into ruin.