Although I suffer from
a strong faith
it allows me the privilege to
not fear death
or its obligatory attachments
no desire exists within me
to see just exactly
what lurks in
other-side-a-topia
I don’t ruminate on
who I know that
will be
won’t be there
they are dead
they are gone
they may/may not be
hanging out someplace
metaphysical or spiritual
bus stop
malt shop
corner bar
beyond
I don’t think of departed
souls as how they were
when they left
I imagine them as they
would be, now
Twenty turning sixty?
Skipped the middle-man
life
accumulated nothing
physical, otherwise
pro-and-con scenarios
My father would be 102
a more jovial version than
the 67-year-old dude
who left,
mid-cancer
Grandparents
I never met
girlfriends
I never dated
childhood friends
high school classmates
friends, enemies, cliques
a bunch of people
I can’t possibly
have remembered to
have forgotten
the older I get
the older they get
the older I get
the longer the list of
people I hope to meet
people I will need to avoid
those who might want to
catch up, admonish,
welcome me
aboard
to the club
might just want to
mingle there
in
heaven
hell
purgatory
Des Moines’
Greyhound bus depot,
circa 1975
No hurry on my end to
find out if I am
right
wrong
misled or if
I just followed poorly
When I get wherever, if my
name is not on the
bouncer’s clipboard
no biggie
I’ll go find myself
in bold, underlined, on
someone else’s
list
– Mark L. Lucker
© 2019
http://lrd.to/sxh9jntSbd
Ponderable polemics, poetic 