Mundane Matters of Mortals

Alas how they suffer poverty seeds disease like a puddle breeds mosquitoes - the sickly buzz is everywhere.. the dirge of the drudge nowadays damn near everyone in refrain rites and rituals -- enough to almost make this heartless hooded old man feel faint - ha! ..a feign of concern with my bony hand to my stony brow.. mundane mortals mundane matters on their minds - can’t afford to spend their meager dreams on expensive imagination! humdrum hands beat doldrums drum but the Shaman’s drum talks a good trance his slippery soul is virtual elsewhere while a dead march queues in sad pews requiems’ of sainted airs rise in tainted air doleful tones replace the sing-song sigh the music of the wind dies another procession progresses through realms funeral-colored when final debts comes due human hues turn black - widows lost in sable weeds amidst white lily stars - weepy stems to meet my scythe when their harvest comes a planetary pandemic life as bitter as a carafe of day-old café noir gone are monotonous morns and norms when humanity afforded sugar cubes for the dirty drink - D e a t h; the darkness of my name the biological warfare I wage my savage -yet imaginative- primitive persona.. balls of spike proteins I wield like a medieval mace the penniless pay for their rich mantra; live to die and die to undyingly l - i - v - e and ooh.. the cruel pain the plagued poor endure before they reach their precious “forevermore” church bells swing and death knells ring a steeple’s hollow heart quiet when pregnant with empty space now sings fruitful with south side sorrows English style circle bell brings muffled mourning full-circle knolls tell the story of the coffined; warm womb to cold casket the departed as distant as the last toll’s fade.. the years rung - wrung out so slowly empty-hourglass hours man-handled… a forced meditation but not a mediation on mortality a haunting for those with breath still to sob as my pale horse hauls the wagon with today’s grim crop - I dare say the business of reaping souls is booming! “Death!” oh how you shudder to utter my name once I was like the distant cousin who rarely visited today I am the in-law loathed who’s barged back in - and primped in my never-before-seen covid robes I am anything but mundane Susan Ashley March 13, 2021 *mace: a heavy medieval war club with a spiked or flanged metal head, used to crush armor