Best Mortem Poems
Post Mortem by David Lustrup 2011
Here I lay....dead
Icy ,black, thick blood, motionless in my veins
Yet i see from my eyes.
Numbness, this world of grey.
I hear the sound of birds wings--scratching, fluttering, playing in reverse.
I lay in rigor, the world goes by in scattered frames.
And the sound is out of sync.
Deafening silence. The icy chill in these bladed raindrops.
I feel them hit my naked lifeless body like anvils,
As I lie cold and dead in this freezing grave of your absence.
One day for sure our life must end
as we depart from foe or friend,
from pain or strife, despair or joy
our body just a broken toy.
While friends all weep and foes rejoice
will we then listen to their voice
and wonder why we are not dead
but still can hear the things they said.
It's then that we at last will find
the I that's me is just our mind,
the living body that we bore
was just the earthly cloak we wore.
One day for sure we'll know indeed
the fruits we'll bear from living's seed
and join with minds just like our own
alas, not all are welcomed home.
If we have lived a life of hate
then death will take us through a gate
where we'll reside with those we find
have naught but hate within their mind.
But if we've played a loving hand
we'll then enjoy this promised land
to live again as we pass through
with those who are still kind and true.
One day for sure our life must end
but only on this earth my friend,
how we live now will guide the way
to where at last we’ll get to stay!
Ivor G Davies
Post Mortem
Did you hear them sing dirge:
When the world comes crashing down on me,
Did you hear those voices across the divide?
A cacophony of tormented brain
All dead and moldy like forgotten bread,
Dust to dust,
Ashes to ashes;
Their lives begin to wan
As ashes from their burning hemp bush
That is just about what it is,
Their lives nailed with needle and shot away
And all the dark sores,
Spun a tangles tale of million arms
When this madness finally settle like death,
And after all the soaring
High up like a bird,
After all the falling, sprawling supine
And whimpering, eyes dilating,
Groaning like tired door
After all the hours in the back-rooms,
Of walking nights In dark corner streets
Of knives that flash deviance
To stark-eyes victims
The spiting cough from over laboured guns,
All for propitiation for the spirits
Of their consuming gods, After all of these
Someone still got his addict soaking brain splash
Out to foul the air
A tormented, yet a nice sleep.
Then commence that shout across the divide,
Help! Liberate this soul from
That which diminishes
From this quagmire, the deadness;
Of imprison moments.
And that is just all
With tip of match sticks
They measured out their life
And got filled up their nostrils
Exploded into the abyss
And a dirge: when the world comes Crashing down on me.
Yes, death has always been a joke
That wise ones play on lesser folk,
And childlike eyes around campfire
Grow wide as fiction’s fake desire
Invokes a poetry of fear
That truly clouds the atmosphere,
For even fools can mount a tale
Where facts can’t make the story stale.
Oh sure we’ve all seen people die
On movie screens, projected lie,
Though close friend’s death may seem more real,
The deeper truth is how you feel...
But gossamer as spider’s web,
Moods come and go like salt sea’s ebb.
Yes, friend is gone for all we know...
Explain what makes a flower grow?
From where comes certainty of death,
As simple as a lack of breath?
The fact that your friend doesn’t wake?
Deep certainty he’d not forsake?
No found note but he’s not around?
Perhaps you put him in the ground?
In anger now you call God “Fraud!”
But it’s small “d” that has you awed.
It’s death you hide from in the dark,
And death that sparks your dreams of Ark,
There’s no surprise you think God dead,
For death is all that fills your head.
But death has been fraud from the start,
He has no sting, can’t even fart!
If soul is real death must be scam,
Prepare to meet the great I AM.
Brian Johnston
February 10, 2016
What was this unarticulated joy
that beat inside my chest?
That which was expected and is past
reflected numens chanting to my spirit,
as if subdivided in my superconsciousness,
I may not bear them as a whole
though holy they may be...
one mystery selects a lifetime as its drum
and makes the years crescendo
poco a poco from its infancy
unto the crashing storm of age
when breath itself implodes.
I think it is too much--
a joy the mind at quest must know
and not to be endured.
I think a man must shake his fist
in protest as Beethoven did,
unable to sustain it to the end.
It is the depth and height of ecstasy
of which its single aim
is to expire.
~
post-mortem note to mr. eliot
dearest thomas,
having lived long enough to see the
a-bomb drop, one wonders if you had
rethought your infamous ending
to “The Hollow Men,”
for most certainly
the world will not go with a
whimper,
we would be so lucky
to be rolled up in the fetus position
down deep in a shadowy corner,
to wither away “whimpering”
a slow & silent
personal demise,
each one of us---
however,
as things look,
the a-bomb will appear a walk in the
park, compared to what we have
coming---
the only justice is that it’s exactly
what we all
deserve.
Man fears time
That’s why we waste it
We keep running against time
‘Cause we know we can’t chase it..
Why do we keep waiting
For something that’s never there?
Instead of just accepting
The truth no matter how unfair?
Until the damage is done
And there’s no place to go
When the weeping has begun
There’s nothing left to show..
They say what ifs and could’ve beens
Are the last words of a fool
And giving up on dreams
Is something only cowards do..
But regrets never come first
And sorry is always late
The retribution is a big black hearse
For us victims of time, preys of fate..
I have struggled and craved
For revenge, respect and redemption
But I have always failed
Now my consolation, is oblivion..
twisted chains in the very fabric of their existence...
come join in the resistance
shattered glass out on the patio
vanished corpse out of thin air
in peril the vortex shimmers at the call of nature
strangled by fragments of false decorum
we left a sign out in the parchment area
having no visitors allowed inside of property
an infested entity filled with torn mockery
the smell permeates the weight of the skull
still I have a good story to tell
a funeral director decided to sleep on the job
at night it would send quite a bit of fright
the notion of cobwebs woke him from his sleep
tiny creatures manifested themselves out on the corridor
alone in his tiny egg shelled frame
the man went totally insane
his eyes were as clear crystal evil
throwing things in the air he was a loose cannon
walking over to a corpse he threw himself on top
vomit came out of his system along with maggot infested feces...
he collapsed in the silence of the room
a candle was lit near by as it fluttered it started a fire on the ceiling..
it was to late for the director he died a horrible death
yet for some reason his body was fully intact
they gave him a funeral with all the trimmings
a flash of light grew nearby then there was the fly
many years would pass still having every reason to grasp
a tailor knocked on the door
there lay the corpse in post mortum habitation
now was a very good time to take a break on a long awaited vacation.
We are what we do;
we are what we say
As day becomes night,
and night becomes day
We are twice begotten;
we are twice betrayed
Forgiveness in hiding
—redemption misplayed
(West Philadelphia: February, 2020)
Their hands glide across his skin like death
The coolness of hands, without emotion, felt by none
'It burns, it freezes, it hurts so much, make it stop'
Is what he would say had he one breath of life left
Instead he lays there with a slack, stone cold expression
His eyes closed to hide the lack of life they present
He cannot see the horrors of the embalming
He cannot feel when they change his clothes
He cannot sense the sorrow of the ones who mourn
And when it’s finally over, he cannot feel the heat of a thousand suns reducing him
Reducing him to nothing but ashes, to be kept away and as something precious as diamond
Yet worth overall, less than dirt
His post mortem will always end his humanity
After poor old Mortimer was dead
by his grave ~ a flowerbed
-Only a Poet-
is envious of the dead
(Amtrak R5: June, 2021)
Distant melancholic music plays.
Dead flowers swoon and sway
In the molten breeze of an August afternoon.
Colors lost too soon,
Faded and forsaken by the relentless beat
Of an angry sun.
Forlorn and forgotten by the living,
Sight and scent no longer giving pleasure
To jaded eyes ever longing
For the newness of things.
Alas, death saves its own,
Finding home in a wasteland
of discarded memories and long lost days,
Resurrected in hearts and minds
Held captive by the lure and love
Of the simple abject beauty of decay.
Is this life we live,
the life we know,
really death
from another plane
Is the hurt we suffer,
and the struggle we bear,
the result
of another realm
Are the visions we see,
and the insights unnamed,
but a window
into that world
Is what we call life,
what they call death,
with its reckoning
left untold
(Rosemont Pennsylvania: April, 2020)
The test scores are worse than they've ever been
How can these kids expect an American Dream
Most Democracies buried in debt
individuals max their credit, also a bad bet.
Our military is outmanned and outgunned
China can build 200 ships when we build one.
Their hypersonic missiles can sink our carrier fleet
Their allies round the world can make the job complete.
Their kids master science and math
Here kids fail at logic, no upward path
Their elite are engineers, ours have law degrees
We block things, they have world class factories.
Frenchmen riot, want to retire before age 65
Once the state gives, reversal efforts don't survive.
Politicians keep promising, budgets keep growing
Stagnation grows too; we reap what they're sowing.
Leaders ignore what their citizens want
We don't want an influx of the intolerant
Chinese don't have race riots, or student spies
It doesn't matter that propaganda tells lies.
We thought there'd be balance, assumed, not told
The media, academia, the center would hold
Movies would vary, opinions too
You wouldn't be shot dead, that's what savages do.
So, did the Republic fail that the founders made?
Will totalitarians leave our legacy in the shade?
It doesn't look good now, in a row allies fall
To Jihad or Karl Marx, who yet hears freedom's call?