Death is a lying witness
He claims to have taken those who are not gone
Their spirits bang against the walls of their own physicality
He alone can free them from their nightmare, belljar existence
Never was there such solitary confinement

Death is a lowbrow consumer
Browsing the aisles
for trinkets of life
Items bought cheaply
Then tossed aside without thought
All purchases ill-conceived
But of too little value
To warrant the bother of taking them back to the store.

Death is an idle servant
The struggles of those who shoulder
an almost unimaginable burden of care,
amuse him.
Those who are all-but dead
are left to clutter the lives of the living
the able
the desperate.

Death is an honest salesman
From the fearful to the grateful
All will buy his policy in the end
None have cause to accuse him of mis-selling
What you see in the contract
is what you get.
And those who seek God
Will find Him in the small print

Death is a casual thief
Anyone foolish enough
to leave life lying around
can expect to lose it.
No grand larcenist, this¾
The price of a smoke
or one hard drink too many will suffice
The slender digits, pale as bones
slip us into his pocket
to clink and rub against all manner of strangeness.

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Gentle, starving people

Soldiers came on horses
For poultry and potatoes
It’s easy to be ruthless
From the saddle
They brought with them some wagons
To load with their supplies
Stolen from the mouths
Of gentle, starving people

They left, as they arrived
In silence, quiet glory
Written on their faces
Hindered by their loads
Hastened by their consciences
Protected by their guns
Hated by their victims
Gentle starving people

We ate the earth and lived
To be repaid as seasons
Passed. We ploughed their corpses
Back into the land
And so their food was paid for
We reaped our harvests, prayed
And watched the way their buttons
Once bronze on moonlit evenings
Blackened in the ground