Delayed Departure

You growl and moan death rattles

Send a howling wind across the room

Haunting deep songs echoed

Your baby brown eyes are closed shut

As if a tailor had sewn them permanently

To prevent one last look, one last glance

Your dry tongue cracked like the earth’s desert

On the roof and sides of your mouth

Resides a collection of yellow pus like material

A crackling cough is produced with congestion and mucous

Airways now clogged with life, delaying your wished departure

You are late, but your flight will take off

Bad breadth swarms your last cries

Your fresh new diaper emanates

Smells of shit and urine

You bring your left hand to your head

Combing your hair in the opposite direction

Your left arm crosses to bring your limp right one to your chest

Right leg lays still and lifeless

With a gathering of toes overlapping toes

Your nails are fungus ridden, on both feet and your right hand

You look like a photograph I’ve seen from the Holocaust

One of those humans in a pile on the street

Discarded but never forgotten

Your skin is melting off your skeleton

The skinny bones now draped in flesh

Falling off your frail frame, discarding their use

Fragile and splintering

Like a wishbone about to be broken

A twig fallen from the autumn tree

So pale and ghostly

You are white as a winter day

Flaking into eternal dust

Every day you were cold

Bundled in sweaters and shirts and layers

Now you remove the sheets and blankets, warm, moving toward the light

The oversized diaper reveals

Your thin scattered pubic hair

Long strands like Okinawa grass coming forth

Blood clots and scabs and bruises line the contour of your body

Gateways and damns preventing life and death

Your chest bruised from where we tried to wake you

Dentures sit in a plastic jar of water on the porcelain sink

Your aged cheeks sunken in, your moustache still proud

When you sneeze, your left hand automatically wipes your nose

Weight has gone rapidly, more than before

Your wedding band is too big for your thin finger

The ring is sliding off, slowly inching towards the dirt below

Your nipples protrude stiffly through your hospital gown

I can see the impression of the pacemaker on your chest

And feel the slight amount of hair on your arm

Your body quivers now and then

In an uncontrollable vibrating motion

Your knees and legs tremble to a rhythm unknown

You still carry a full head of hair

Thick grey hair so white

You have hair of God

When I kiss you goodbye, afraid I am not

On your cheek, your lips, your forehead

I say goodbye every day

© 2009 David Greg Harth

09.12.07.11:18:47@306Greenwall2545UnivBronxNYC