All That Remains

toss these bones on the pyre when they’re done climbing mountains –

if I can’t meditate or screw or smile or hurt,

hurl me headfirst with hands that used to hold me,

naked into a brand new ethos

make me the smoke that chases you from a summer fire

as I started

let me end

let creative flames spare my retired countenance from the mortician’s dull imagination.

disperse my dust                                 watch it on the wind

like Charlie Parker notes                     forever hanging           in a Beatnik midnight

Einstein particles                                 floating toward the edge

                                                            of the Big Bang at last.

                                               

Damn it don’t let them bury me

in that solemn place with the other stiffs,

save me from becoming ten words                              in stone

after all the things I’ve done.

I never much cared for gated communities,

row upon row

of privileged mud –

let’s leave the graveyards to the living and      burn our mortgage deeds at

the

Pearly Gates –

let the morning’s ordinary noises be my epitaph,

let my legacy be the Evening Star,

let my granddaughter’s moonlight poetry be my memorial,

let my essence sneak out through the back door

let me settle in the soil somewhere out there

in the new collective

mingling with motorcycle heroes and cancer saints,

let us grow them Little League grass

and dandelions and dandelions and dandelions.

Published by Weird Cookies - February 2014