Funeral Aficionado

It’s something to hope for, that the talk at your wake
will crack a rib, it’s so funny.

I see you over there. Hoping. Just madly hoping. You
practice draping your body

across the green, pool-table felt. You practice, also,
the rough Irish brogue so thick

that it runs down the mountain and smacks
straight into song.

There are worse things to hope for, like the paper-
dry attendance

of Episcopalians in black. Or like the brutal gestures
of a people hell-bent

on a future in white. I see you mapping out your last
moment on the canvas

like a Pollack or Basquiat. Drool, spit, blood,
a useless bone

or two to the wolves. And that fucking rimshot
eloquence that ensues?

It makes the ear deaf, shocks the solar
plexus like a roof

falling down on tomorrow’s
ghost.