Little Dead Body Poem

How right you are, dear Paul, that
We hear of famous people's deaths while on vacation.
Perhaps it 's so that their funeral s are not too crowded,
With their loyal fans being out of town and all.
Those celebrities are pretty clever.
I've heard that somebody is born every eight seconds,
So I presume that someone dies every eight seconds,
Just to keep things even;
It makes me feel short changed when I read the obituary page-
Someone's holding back information.
It also prompts me to flip through the telephone directory on
Sleepless nights, saying over and over again,
" Yup, you' re all going, every last one of you ... "
Wow, heaven must be a big place.
I don't know too many dead people, but folks tell me I'm young.
When my grandfather died, he was laid out
In the Bub Funeral Home, and I was secretly glad Mr. Bub did not
Change his name to something more romantic
When he went into business.
I just wish it was less memorable.
My high school locker partner, Ned , worked part-time
For a mortician. Imagine dressing dead people,
Straightening their ties, fluffing up their hair
So you can afford to take a girl to the movies on Saturday night.
That's love. That's adolescent desperation.
I would have been honored to go to the movies with Ned and
Have him buy me popcorn. Instead, I went out with a boy
Who died. The hardest part for me was knowing that
His body did not just dissipate on the bed the minute he died. I
Think that's what keeps me off of suicide: the idea that something
Is left for someone else to clean up. How rude and inconsiderate-
It's a pain to take out the weekly trash, let alone figure out what to do
With over a hundred pounds of flesh that's about to go bad.
It would be even worse in India where there's a religious sect
That believes you can't desecrate any of the elements with the dead-
They can't be buried or burned, they can't be cast out to sea,
So they're taken to the top of the Tower of Silence
Where they become the vulture's problem.
How's that for passing the buck?
No, when I go, I want to go clean, convenient, leaving no mess
As if I vaporized while taking a shower,
As if I moved to Antarctica leaving no forwarding address.