Sestina of the Living Dead

When the possums come, I’ll be long gone.
(There are bugs in my blood in my bones in my brain)
When the feeding seeded mouths come gumming on my gizzard,
And the molting sultry moths suck the juices from my spine
When the sinewed sad sepulchral saints come knocking at my door,
I’ll be spitting, sputtering, blinking winking gone.

Eyes spitting out the noon-day sun,
For possums who can never be
Sad for their losses, they don’t hold mass
For the dry bones of their long dead children,
Once filled and brimming with the sucking life-force, now
Flopping from the sloppy mouths of long dead dogs

Wise words have never whispered forth from tubular mouths,
The spitting image of their pater-mater-frater-soror
So many, so similar, so why not be cruel? Suck
From the possums their fill, their kin
My bones fall out to meet them, but I can no longer swat or squeeze
Never sad for the mooches, les mouches, the flies.

Nor sad for their gilded cousins,
Living in the mouths of monks and miners alike,
Structured cheek-bones of a phylum of filth, order Entropia
Fluttering behind my head once, and spitting in my soup
No need for possums when
The wind-sucking mada-maters come.

The collective only a stagnant, passive inhale, sucking only potential
They’ve done me no sad, no hindrance, no help
So I swat and swing and hiss like ferrel possums
Until my mouth hits home and the infection spreads
Spitting foam until the very end
And my aching bones will never fall to rest in my own plasticine home

They’re laid among the bones of the others,
Where the sucking soul-wind picks them dry of substance
Spitting out the rest for the saints who come like beggars
Those who used to be my own stand sad and helpless at the door of someone else’s nature,
While I have already made my home, and not in the hearts or minds or mouths of the righteous
For the possums never say a prayer.