How Poetry Goes Bad When Left To Die In the Open Air
(In memory of Fred Hill)
The poet willed his body to science
But science sent it back
Saying the corpse was a gnarled symbol,
Innards telling a tangled narrative,
Organs meaningfully rearranged
With an arterial asterisk by the heart.
Too much was left unsaid.
His friends tried to cremate him
In a Viking burial, but the harbour cops
Said it was against a city ordinance
Because the smoke from a poet
Would curl into sky-writing
And that blue space was restricted
To paying, living customers.
Rather than bury him, his friends hollowed out
A log and watched the pulp and paper mill
Reincarnate him as 8 1/2 by 11’s on which a poet
Later wrote his own poems which soon
Found their way to a dump, right beside
Remaindered copies of the dead poet’s books.
Some kids set fire to it all and the stench
Blew across the city until everyone turned away,
Finally affected by the community of poets.
