A Collar of Mortality on this Morning in Late October

by Corey Mesler

"No cries, above all no cries, be urbane, a credit to the art and code
of dying, while the others cackle…"
Samuel Beckett

 

I do not want to think about death this morning
as my seven-year-old daughter watches
Tex Avery in the living room
and my beautiful wife bathes in the room next
to mine and I can picture her
shapely legs, stepping from the tub, the water a
glisten on her smooth skin.
I do not want to imagine a cessation, my heart
just a pump that gives out, no one
really around to fix it, and I am gone, way gone.
Death is a kind master, I believe this,
but its his way, the highway, there's no return flight.

 

© 2005 Corey Mesler

Corey Mesler has published in numerous journals and anthologies. His novel, Talk: A Novel in Dialogue, was released in 2002. He also has a number of poetry chapbooks available. In 2005, his second novel, We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon will be released. He also claims to have written, "Incense and Peppermints." With his wife, he runs Burke's Book Store in Memphis TN.