Gravediggers

I didn’t give much thought to gravediggers –
until now. Their work is cinematic:
the casket, its slow-motion slide, static
flock of black umbrellas, patter-pitter
of soil on the coffin top, the rigour
of the priest’s speech, a stomach’s pneumatic
drop, the shock of me in my red lipstick,
a clown whose smile dies on a hair-trigger.

Gravediggers know that time is tissue-thin;
that obituaries are make-believe,
but dim imitations are everything –
that truth is a prison to those who grieve.
Gravediggers know the gift of pseudonyms.
They bury names each day before they leave.            

**

On Ginsberg’s Skeletons

When Ginsberg’s skeletons began to speak to me it was no surprise.
With a horror-film world order on the rise, logic dictates they arise.

The skeletons are poor company; hollows devoid of empathy,
their ribcage-prickle tendency to fight amongst themselves.

Beset by their running commentaries, I am a magnet for hostility.
No more office coffee trips – colleagues blame me for their clattery-clinks

when their real concern should be how readily Ginsberg’s originals
adapted for the twenty-first century. This is no accidental resurrection.

While our attention was elsewhere, skeletons were bedding billionaires.
The Presidential skeleton just added Musk to his cologne collection.

Meanwhile, the Macho skeleton discovered algorithms, delights in
wearing my son’s skin, jumping unannounced from behind the couch.

I cannot be the only one, plagued by their jangling song. Others
pretend not to see, avoiding graveyards, as if ignorance will save us.

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Megan Cartwright is an Australian poet and teacher. Her writing has been published in journals and magazines around the world, including Contemporary Verse 2, Cordite Poetry Review and Island Magazine.

 

 

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