it’s a weird one, isn’t it?
The older you get, the more it exists.
How much better would it be
If death appeared as he does on TV
A man in black,
Mr. Skull with a scythe on his back
He’d sit down next to you and say something clichéd
Like: ‘I’ve come for your soul’
And you’d reply: ‘not now mate, the football’s on’
But in real life, how different it is
They say helpful things, like:
‘it’s what he would’ve wanted’
And ‘he had a good life’
But that never quite answers the question
when you’re the one left behind
then you feel selfish for feeling hard done by
when you’re the one who’s alive
but sometimes that’s hard, it’s okay to admit
that you’re sick
of the pats on the back
and the ‘here when you need me’ s
when you know that most of them
just want to know the details
like it’s some cheap soap opera
unstoppable, irreversible
giving way to curses
the only way left
to express yourself
it’s an absence ever present
an event that will always exist
stuck in your mind like the pork pies and cheese twists
at a wake,
the one place where no one feels like eating.
The thing is:
This will never get easier,
In grief there’s no sense
Each time you feel it
it’s for a different friend,
Dependent on the fact that,
for once,
It’s apparent, a universal happening
That no one understands
So back to the last send-off I attended
It ended with the triumphant sound of bagpipes,
Somehow supposed to imply glory
Or the end of an epically proportioned story
But all I thought, all I heard,
Were car horns in the distance
A cacophony,
More metaphorically fitting
For the white noise
Of the formalities of mortality
They call a funeral
The older you get, the more it exists.
How much better would it be
If death appeared as he does on TV
A man in black,
Mr. Skull with a scythe on his back
He’d sit down next to you and say something clichéd
Like: ‘I’ve come for your soul’
And you’d reply: ‘not now mate, the football’s on’
But in real life, how different it is
They say helpful things, like:
‘it’s what he would’ve wanted’
And ‘he had a good life’
But that never quite answers the question
when you’re the one left behind
then you feel selfish for feeling hard done by
when you’re the one who’s alive
but sometimes that’s hard, it’s okay to admit
that you’re sick
of the pats on the back
and the ‘here when you need me’ s
when you know that most of them
just want to know the details
like it’s some cheap soap opera
unstoppable, irreversible
giving way to curses
the only way left
to express yourself
it’s an absence ever present
an event that will always exist
stuck in your mind like the pork pies and cheese twists
at a wake,
the one place where no one feels like eating.
The thing is:
This will never get easier,
In grief there’s no sense
Each time you feel it
it’s for a different friend,
Dependent on the fact that,
for once,
It’s apparent, a universal happening
That no one understands
So back to the last send-off I attended
It ended with the triumphant sound of bagpipes,
Somehow supposed to imply glory
Or the end of an epically proportioned story
But all I thought, all I heard,
Were car horns in the distance
A cacophony,
More metaphorically fitting
For the white noise
Of the formalities of mortality
They call a funeral