Friday, March 24, 2017

Death is not a faraway land

a place to go on holiday and

bake on burning sands by day

and hold up your right hand in

a bar at night for a selfie to prove

to others not there to bomb your

pic that like diving head first into

unknown depths you were indeed

for two weeks or so alive and well

in the kingdom of selfie land.

And on your first day back

jet-lagged all to hell when

you show your pictures

around and friends say

what memories you must

have you can say well it

was on my bucket list

so I went . . . then you may

come to feel death to be not

much like the kingdom of selfie

land.

Get your second wind and

think about it little more and

death looms nearer still.

FG 3/25/2017

Substitute heaven for death in the poem (a la George Bernard Shaw) then subtract the narcissistic selfie and you have a softer view of death (a la Baudelaire in La mort des pauvres). Juxtaposition is what I am playing with here – that and my dislike of selfies. Do you remember an old Kodak commercial that asked: When was the last time you took a picture of your father? Well? Do You? Poetry is memory.

I posted a poem about heaven, death, hell, vacation and selfies on my blog, but it sucks. Writing is a searching and over the day or so I was searching I was happy, but the end product sucks. I’ll just remember I was happy doing it.