funereal

gus stills

He choked back tears as he pushed the door open,
standing there, letting the sight unfold.

Shaken, ethereal, like you could fold him into
an origami figure & send him floating
from some hotel balcony,
watching him dwindle away.

Around him, the organ music fought with reticence,
discordant but necessary.
You don’t go to a funeral home to listen to piped silence.

He stood there on the threshold & thought of eternity,
what it meant, & then pushed on,
walking through the waiting room to where I lay,
presented like a store window,
dressed & unnatural.

A boy—his friend—shorn early,
looked upon through a film of tears.
He stood there, flimsy, broken,
staring at waxy lines, taking in the faint scent of sanitation,
feeling rooted in some inexplicable judgment.

In a way, the sole audience of an early passing,
cleaved by grief, shaken by
the duplicity before him.

He cried & took in the sight
without really seeing anything real
about a put-back-together body
deprived of its vitality,
lacking a voice to combat the organ’s lamentation.

He stood & cried because he couldn’t do anything else.
Eventually, he drew back to see himself,
unfolded & bare, a wet map crisscrossing his face,
trying to stand at attention
without wrinkling, like a paper sculpture,
crushed & thrown away.

justam

This one made me cry. :(

gus stills

me too, this one is a little more personal than my others. i found it looking through a portfolio of stuff i wrote when i was in college and it hit me pretty hard. i hadn't thought of the poem, let alone the funeral home that inspired it, in a long time.

depopulationINC

justam wrote:

This one made me cry. :(

indeed powerfully writtne and emotional...trully speaking inner thoughts