What we do with death

Part 1 of 4

In what we do

with the story of living,

death becomes more like

the marks of punctuation

in the story line.

Death is more

the commas and periods.

Death is rarely the nouns

and ever so remotely

the verbs for the living.

Death signals last chapters

and last lines.

Death in the form

of perpetration,

infers, “the end”.

Murders and suicides

and genocides easily register

as involvements in retributions

before or after the fact.

Births are rarely

“pay it forwards”,

but deaths are many times

paybacks.

Justified in someone’s mind

as payment for

or towards a cause.

It is a summation

of another’s life

as a commodity

suitable for currency

in the greater scheme

of things.

It is the equation

where death is the “equals”

or “totals line” to be drawn.

All the subtle nuance formalities

of one’s thinking around death

are conditioned

by the social training

for the experience of death,

everything from friend

to a family member.