On Dreaming of Death

On Dreaming of Death

On dreaming of death
On dreaming of holding my intestines
Ropes of earthworms in my arms
Slimey and dripping from my blood
That runs in red rivulets down my legs
Crouching over as if I cradled a child
A tiny, curved C, I died, and awoke.

I awoke to the moon
Shining her midnight performance
Her silver figure peeking through the blinds
I awoke to Death
That miserly old woman
Prodding my belly with her cane
But I was not dead yet
I was not hers to claim
So she hobbled away

My grandmother told me once
One hand grasping her
Many-colored wodden crucifix
In her tiny hand as
Brown and weathered as sandpaper
She told me with one hand
Scurrying across her face
Like a crab on a sandy beach
Remembering the skin of her youth
When it was as sleek as a whale's flank
Of how Death loved our family

"That whore, that bag of burned bones
Always has her eye on us because
Pain is to the blood as sugar is to coffee
And our blood is so sweet she will have to
Suck it up with a straw"
I thought she was senile that
Old bat with skin as bubbly and hard
As a piece of melted cheese
Until I saw Death's face for the first time
Buzzing about the bed of my grandmother
As a black fly on an open coffin
And so my grandmother passed
With her mother's name on her lips
And Death carried her off as
Buoyantly as if she were a child
With a doggy bag

My mother was then next in line
She was a fragile creature with the
Eyes of a startled doe
And a mind as shallow as an oyster
So it was easy for Death
To twist one finger in her mind
To make her go insane
And thus claim her earlier
So she was a tree cut down
Her arms wide and empty

Leaving me as the final remnant
IN my adolescence she pursued me
Invigorated by her meals
She became my black shadow by night
And the black shroud I lay down in at night
Impatient, though, she could not wait

"Your grandmother's blood I
Slurped like a milkshake so
Thick was it from the cancer.
Your mother's bubbled like
Spring water on my tongue
From her airy brain
And yours will be the sweetest
Thick and slow-moving like
Honey from your remorse and youth
You will be the sweetest yet
My honey-suckle girl, my golden one."

I have fled from her since that day
Still she pursues me
I am her game, her trophy
She pulls at my flesh with
Her corroding fingernails
And is the incessant chanting
At the back of my head

Death, that carrion crow
She has no power
She is the weathered grandmother
Moving as if to the rhythm of the sea
In her rocking chair calling
"Come, my dark girl,
My little golden one, come."