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 puss 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 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