A few candles on my birthday cake.
One puff of my lucky breath, I blow
the new little flirtations out.
I salute Mr. Death, his concubines,
and veiled Mrs. Death,
his is an invisible family,
invisible children play among the living,
Brain Hemorrhage and Heart Attack are pals.
Mrs. Death prefers the title Angel of Death,
she insists loving kindness is a fungus
that lives on her labors,
she's the inventor of starvation, religious wars.
Modernists, the Deaths somersault with joy,
they play with Cancer, a favorite child,
except for visible Melanoma.
Old age, Leukemia, and Sarcoma sit around
a Thanksgiving table with abortions,
the turkey stuffed with Dementia,
decorated with assassination parsley.
The Deaths really have a good time,
the more people on earth
the more they have the pleasures to kill,
they take pride in statistically fatal accidents.
Their deep sadness these days: extinct species.
Saturn often drops in for barbeques.
The Deaths’ ancient favorite entertainment:
they watched Hittite gods fight each other,
then the winners fought the oracles.
* * *
The Death family sweeps the city streets
clean of forgotten dead. When necessary,
His Unholiness and His Mrs. throw forgotten waste
into the fields of nowhere that grow nothing—
occasionally old photographs.
What do Mr. and Mrs. Death do in bed,
what do their “private parts” look like?
Find out for yourself when they fuck you.
Mrs. D kisses every newborn
because they are beginning to die.
A child, she played Sleep was her brother.
True, praying to your God keeps Deaths out of mind.
What is a good Death—one or the other drops in
on those surrounded by love. Their last minutes
are close as humankind comes to eternal life.
Death can play a little Bach or Stravinsky
with a spoon on your tea or coffee cup.
Coda
There were spirits before scribes and cuneiform,
a giant tiger’s paw scratched a boulder.
Writing sent Death back to the beginning
when Death was the first word.
Orpheus sang I’ve lost my Eurydice, Zeus didn't care.
Eros, that little winged god, rode the back
of an old centaur younger than I am—
the centaur’s hands tied behind his back.
Death is a grape, then a raisin, a bye bye,
he is a traveller tumbling
through the universe, proof
Death is a many-colored harlequin.
He twirls a lightning walking stick, I choose
not to use on my 92nd birthday.