Death (spoken word poetry)

What a lie! to say death merely looks asleep

Death is a sight, unmistakable

Sullen sunken features sinking into its skull

I study its stillness

Blackened bruised and blood stained teeth

housed crooked within a gaping mouth

this once-living being,

Once breathing being,

Once being being, and now nothing.

You have blood pulsing through your veins

Blood the bringer of warmth serving every finger, toe, and nose tip

death’s heart stays motionless

blood more semi solid than liquid

Consciousness ceased it knows no peace

Just as it knows no chaos.

No joy

no suffering

blissfully undifferentiating.

Death lays still

Unaware as I shuffle

Past huddles of its red-eyed family

towards its hospital bed

with a shrill sweep of a curtain, I now face death alone.

Death’s skin is pale, eerily yellow

A ribbed plastic tube forced past its lips,

Blood stained tape anchoring it to the corner of its mouth

Death’s mouth gapes wide open to reveal its poor inhabitants

Ragged teeth stained yellow and brown from plaque or blood dried up

I didn’t dare inspect it too closely.

My gaze wanders,

An IV line snakes from a half-emptied medicine bag

still dripping

into a hand gone cold.

I move closer.

There’s a palm sized cross hanging from death’s neck

I stand still and try to pray

I cannot sense their soul

I do not know if I believe in one and so instead I turn my prayers to the melodic sobbing

Just beyond the curtain.

I try to pray

For the ones who death devastates:

May you be safe,

may you be healthy,

may you find peace,

may you live with ease.

With a gloved thumb I peel open death’s eyelids and my torchlight finds still pupils

I place two fingers at the nape of death’s neck and feel the absence of life’s pulsations

I press my stethoscope onto death’s chest

The only sound amplified in my ears is the mechanical humming of the ventilator death is still hooked on to.

a machine meant to keep death away yet death slipped through the cracks anyways.

I cover death with a blanket

Warmth meant not for death but the sniffles and sobs outside

And just as my hand reaches to open the curtains

I find that death’s eyelids cannot close

It can’t do that anymore

So I return death to its original shape

Before I peeled its eyelids open

Before I disturbed its resting place.

In fables or was it it coco

They say souls live on when the living remembers

I remember.

I slide through the curtains and walk towards death’s family

They go silent

inching closer to me

I pronounce death dead

And then they thank me

I leave them alone to greet death.