Author Information
Timekill
It's true,
you become immune to the smell
of corpses in your backyard
after a while.
The bodies
once stunk like sin.
But now
the stench is attached
to the walls
and it all
works its way in.
I have been tending
this funeral home
for deadly long;
a lawn
solemnly black
where night
swallowed the brightest dawns
whole.
Pasts once fond
are now a haunting ground
for memories:
In graves lay years.
On strangers' tombstones
I carve hindsight
in a stanza.
But I wonder, now,
if these were the ways
to spend my days:
collecting bodies to mourn over
rather than risk my own
in passionate zest.
Shall I have been better off
in another's deathyard,
battered and bruised,
pulseless and buried,
but more alive
somehow
than now?
