UPDATEDDD::pick me up::more thoughts on loss::a brief study in modern epitaph

there is an age where it becomes undeniable.

either you drink it
or you don't.

when it stops going down easy,
there are exercises to loosen the back of the throat.

(this spirallitic polemic isn't going to make me any friends.)


my father's sister, born in central jersey to immigrant parents, lost her third husband to cancer a few months back.
the other two losses were divorces, not deaths.  i didn't know them.  i didn't know this one either, really.
barry delivered beer kegs to bars while i knew him. he couldn't have been more american.

now, the haze of death can cast a shadow,
i don't know it that well.
(that is to say that at times my rants are from places of anger and hate, but hopefully this comes from distance)

his funeral, held between a "manhattan style" martini bar and a boarded-up apartment complex, sat in the heart of east stroudsburg, pa.

a town in-struggle.  wondering what the year is.

a community once thriving.  a passenger train hasn't stopped there since 1966.  at the pharmacy today, tylenol is oyxcodone.

the "home" is nice enough.

clean.  and with surveillance cameras around the exterior.

they'll be watching me.

inside, the track lighting, soft blues and greens and purples, pastels to temper the blush and concealer thrown on the face, pops at me like carnival spots.  his bearded american happplesss expression stares off.  not careless, a care in the distance, hanging on the horizon, years of living, working too hard for too little, watching your siblings grow old and die. but ready to watch the cars drive round the track once more.  what else are we doing?

i have lost my point.

today he is wearing a red stripped flannel with a brite orange hunting jacket.  perhaps it's cold.  it's probably very cold but i don't think the jacket will help.
nascar placards surround him.  his miller lite baseball cap.
in his hands, a tv remote.
perhaps he'll want to change the channel.

of course the dressing isn't for the body laid (laying) in the casket, its for the grieving:

joanne can rest easy tonight because norton safe web scanned her news feed, in between her third vodka soda and burying her husband.
thank christ kenlynn swooped in and found 37 of 62.  37 of 62 what?  i don't know, it doesn't say.  37 out of 67 isn't even very good.  like 60%.  60% isn't gonna cheer anybody up, especially if their husband just died.

i know people care about me, i can see it on the facebook.

joanne needs some critter milk to heal a wounded animal.  too bad it doesn't cure cancer.

robyn left a hidden present?  too bad joanne doesn't have time to find it, she's grieving.  robyn also found 13 out of 67 of the nothing while playing lunar landing in your garden.  bitch, get out her garden, she's trying to bury her husband there.  and 13 out of 67 sucks.  why would you tell people that.
also, i don't know if you can make it out, but kaylynn at the bottom is checking in at the pocono medical center.  i hear the applesauce is really good there.

back at the viewing, the minister is speaking on death.  he is describing the place of non-living, the space of it.
the expanse of nothingness.
you know,
it's like a hotel.
and everybody gets their own room.
and barry's has a bowling alley.  i think he liked to bowl.
and barry's has a shooting range.  
and barry's has a television.  perfect, because he brought his remote control, mothafuckers!  he's all set!

in the quiet i hear such a fear of death,
such a fear.
cries and sobs.  we'll miss him.  we'll see him soon, they say.
gun shots in the distance, hunters out the first day of the season.
a fat mourner shouts out, through the tears,
"he's up there already,
huntin'."









(looking back, my memory must have faults.
oh, but its all etched in the facebook.
something must have happened.)

(please,
when you find me
with shit around my ankles
and my heart not beating:
burn my body.
there isn't space for it here.)