Thinking of Death

I live my life like Death will pass me by.

   I plan like there will always be tomorrow.

Convinced that only other people die,

   I mourn their loss with mixed relief and sorrow.

Death is the tiger that I cannot see;

   The jungles of the day-to-day conceal it.

Death is the knife that’s always aimed at me;

   Like happiness, just other people feel it.

Life is the great rigged game Death plays with me,

   Making me think that I am in the clover.

I get the ball for years and score scot-free.

   Death only has to play once, and Game Over.

      I hold the key, but haven’t got a clue.

      I think of death, but never think it through.

Copyright 2017 Matthew J Wells

Death Be Not Even Remotely High And Mighty

           

                         for Meir Ribalow

I had a drink with Death. He looked real sad.

I asked, “What’s wrong? Your face looks like a fist.”

He said, “As if you care,” and cursed a tad.

“I bet it’s Meir,” I said, and Death got pissed.

“I HATE it when you people die,” he said.

“The ones you leave behind when your life ends

Keep you alive in them after you’re dead!

You NEVER die—you live on in your friends.

You know what that makes me look like?” he cried.

“The only house on Stupid Avenue!

I don’t see ANYONE after they’ve died!

My kingdom’s empty—they’re all here with you!”

And then he cursed some more and said goodbye,

And I just smiled and went: “Meir says hi.”

Copyright 2016 Matthew J Wells

Jack's Daughter

 

                     for Steph Paynes

The hole he left behind is ten times greater

   Than what it looked like while he was still here.

It was a burrow then; now it’s a crater

   That’s deep enough to make hope disappear—

But never deep enough to dim the light

   That shined from his face when he saw, in you,

The spirit, the devotion, and the fight

   That he inked on your soul like a tattoo.

Sorrow, like love, is ours to give, not keep;

   And death not how we leave, but leave our mark.

The mark he left is why that hole’s so deep.

   The light he shed is why the hole’s so dark—

      Light that will never fail to warm and guide you

      Just like he’ll always be right there beside you.

 

Copyright 2016 Matthew J Wells

 

The Small Print On The Warranty

We think of our bodies as everything

   But what they are—a car we can’t trade in

When engine croaks that used to hum and sing

   And chassis buckles like it’s made of tin.

It’s a machine we use to get around,

   And it runs down because that’s what cars do.

You can replace a part that isn’t sound,

   But when the old transmission’s shot, you’re through.

That failure is built in, from the beginning;

   It’s part of each success we come across.

The point is to appreciate the winning

   While trusting that the finish line is loss.

      Our bodies break down. Why complain? It’s fate.

      We’re all born with an expiration date.

 

Copyright 2016 Matthew J Wells

 

Mortality

 

Everyone says “Don’t say that!” when I say

   “I don’t have much time left” or “If I live.”

But thinking that there’ll always be a day

   When I’m around is foolish.  Life’s a sieve.

Days dribble out of it until they’re gone.

   We only get so many, and don’t know

The number—yet we act like we’ll see dawn

   After dawn unending in this brief show.

And that’s delusional, like living near

   Volcanoes and ignoring earth’s deep drumming.

No matter where we go, it’s coming here.

   If it’s not here already, then it’s coming.

      And when it does, I know that it will be

      The one thing I’ll live long enough to see.

 

Copyright 2015 Matthew J Wells

Growing Old Is A Shipwreck In Slow Motion

Shipwreck - Ivan Aivazovsky, 1854

 

Growing old is a shipwreck in slow motion.

   My helm no longer answers to the wheel.

I’m at the mercy of the wind and ocean.

   Decay has made a horror of my keel.

My prow is broken and my sails are tattered.

   The surge threatens to spill me in the drink.

If I should hit a reef, I will be shattered.

   If I try to outrun this storm, I’ll sink.

I look for calm. But there is only one

   That will embrace me when this squall is spent:

The calm after my journeying is done.

   When this old hull’s buried in sediment,

      I’ll take my lifelong promised place below

      And from the great deep to the great deep go. 

 

Copyright 2015 Matthew J Wells

Slow Motion Fastball

                    for Judy Downer

 

Some deaths are sudden; others come at you

   Like a slow-motion fastball—where you see

It barely moving, like a snail through glue,

   And every stitch has perfect clarity.

And as that ball gets closer, bit by bit,

   You steel your nerves and feel your muscles numbing,

And gamely brace yourself against the hit,

   And think: “I’ve got this!” ‘cause you see it coming.

Then it arrives and BAM!  You’re on your ass

   And pain—pain everywhere—is all you know

Because the impact shatters you like glass.

   No matter if it’s sudden or it’s slow,

      It drops you like a bullet from a gun:

      It’s still a fastball, and it hits like one. 

 

Copyright 2015 Matthew J Wells

 

Nothing Is Gone Until We Let It Go

                               for Sejal Patel

Nothing is gone until we let it go—

   The inconvenient truth, the useful lie,

Hope’s cradle and the open grave of woe—

   Nothing is dead until we let it die.

My mother’s laugh, my father’s mystery,

   My friends above the earth, my friends below—

Each time I think of them, they live in me.

   Nothing is gone until I let it go.

The laws of physics say that, when I die,

   My body stops, but not my energy—

So all that I’ve lived for, lived with, lived by,

   Will be a part of all that is not me

      And hang over your life like mistletoe

      And never die until you let me go.

 

Copyright 2015 Matthew J Wells

 

Sonnet To Be Read At My Funeral

They say that every time you take a breath,

   You will inhale at least one molecule

Of air exhaled by Caesar at his death

   When he cried: “You too, Brutus?”  So if you’ll

Indulge me here—breathe in, and keep it jailed

   Inside you for a second and a half.

I think it’s safe to say you just inhaled

   Dozens of molecules from Matthew’s laugh.

That bark—one half hyena, one half hen—

   That filled up bars and theatres everywhere;

That laugh that we will never hear again

   And always carry in us now, like air;

      A laugh that could bring chuckles from the grim.

      No tears.  All smiles.  Laugh, and remember him.

 

Copyright 2015 Matthew J Wells

 

After Such Knowledge, What Forgetfulness?

We are the only living things who know

   That we will die, and then we all forget it,

So we can live.  When friends and family go,

   We’re wounded, but we always tourniquet it

By saying: “That’s the rule—I’m the exception.

   Everyone has to follow it but me.

The whole world’s born to live a misconception.

   They get a lifetime; I get eternity.”

I’ll take my final breath on my last day,

   Thinking: “Not me.  Not me.  Not me.  Not me.”

Hearing: “Yes, you.  Even you,” as I pay

   The debt that’s due to my mortality.

      All that’s for publication; but in private,

      Deep down, I know—I KNOW—that I’ll survive it.

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

My Flitcraft Moment - 10/4/14

10/4/14 - 215 Park Ave South, two seconds later

 

 

 

A stone façade almost killed me today.

   It fell onto the sidewalk where my head

Had been two steps ago.  One brief delay—

   Two seconds; three—and I would have been dead.

People around me cried out: “Jesus, guy—

   Are you okay?  You were just standing there!”

Part of me felt that dodged-a-bullet high;

   Another part sent up a trembling prayer.

And one part knew that Life, my constant friend,

   Had dropped its mask and showed me its true face.

And now I have a choice: I can pretend

   I didn’t see it, or I can embrace

      This mortal enemy—cold, cruel and hard—

      That hides behind Life’s affable façade.

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

The Flitcraft Story from Maltese Falcon

August Is Like A Month-Long Cemetery

August is like a month-long cemetery—

   The days are tombstones that I wander through.

So many passengers on Charon’s ferry:

   My dad, whom I’ll never be equal to;

My mom, who’s up there smoking Larks in heaven;

   Meir, who would have loved Cold In July;

Brother Gary, still pissed at brother Kevin;

   Michal, whose loss can still make strangers cry.

Part of me likes to think that they all know

   I’m thinking of them; but part of me fears

That when we die, it’s nowhere that we go,

   And all who live weep self-deluding tears.

      Yet weep I will—weep and believe that crying

      Can banish loss with tears of love undying.

 

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

 

The Weight of Time and Grief

It feels like years.  It feels like yesterday.

   The loss.  So close I smell its frantic breath
Against my face, and yet so far away
   It looks like rubbed-out chalk, and not a death.
Sometimes grief beats on me like I’m his drum;
   Sometimes I ache as if it just took place—
And then, a moment later, I grow numb
   And it’s light years away in outer space.
Like a black hole, Death too has gravity:
   It weighs Time down into an endless crawl,
Then speeds it up, and crams eternity
   Into an instant’s shell—and through it all
      Time avalanches as it drips like tears.
      It feels like yesterday.  It feels like years.




Copyright 2013 Matthew J Wells

  

I know my death's the end my birth foretold

I know my death’s the end my birth foretold;

   But sometimes, in the dark, I hear the telling
And feel the moment of it manifold
   Itself inside me like a black bell knelling
Till my soul shudders to its fatal beat
   And I know—know with total certainty—
Not only that my end and I will meet
   But it’s so near now that it answers me
With doom’s irrevocable vertigo
   Down to a black hole full of empty laughter—
With Nowhere when I cry “Where will I go?”—
   With Nothing when I wail “What happens after?”
      Each time we meet, Death leaves one more harpoon
      In me, then sails away and whispers: “Soon.”


Copyright 2013 Matthew J Wells

Death is not sleep

Death is not sleep; sleep takes me unawares,

   Cutting away the anchor chains that keep
My mind from drifting off, before it dares
   To board me and then sail me to the deep.
In sleep, my consciousness fades long before
   My body can succumb to slumber’s kiss.
In death, I’ll feel it all from skin to core
   As my soul plummets from Life’s precipice.
That fall will be the final thing I feel,
   And when I hit the bottom, it will break
My self from this frail shell it calls the real
   With that one shuteye from which none can wake
       And in which all that I have ever done
       Will fall with me into oblivion.

 

Copyright 2013 by Matthew J Wells

 

For M

There’s a hole in the floor I can’t not see;

   I have to inch around it when I walk.

There’s a voice that will never answer me;

   I feel its silence every time I talk.

Sometimes I just pretend the hole’s a lie.

   Sometimes I stand beside the edge and stare

Down at the emptiness, and think: “If I

   Could see the bottom, would I see you there?”

But what I keep forgetting is, this hole

   Is not the awful trap-door you fell through--

It’s you.  It’s what you are now.  And my soul

   Knows that there’s only one thing I can do:

      Pick the deep hole of you up off the floor

      And hold you till you’re part of me once more.

Copyright 2012 Matthew J Wells

Just Because

We all want to believe there’s more to this

   Than just the floating here and fleeting now.

We want a vow each time we feel Life’s kiss.

   We want Why and Because to balance How.

We want there to be something so much more

   Than the mundane, that tells us firmly, “Yes,

You are eternal, and this life’s a poor

   Excuse for a more permanent address.”

But Here’s the only place I get to live

   And Now’s the only time I get to try

To love and feel and laugh and ache and give

   And make my life an answer to Life’s Why

      That will be wise enough to give Death pause,

      And answer all whys with my life’s Because.

Copyright 2012 Matthew J Wells

Mortality Sonnets - 4

You were in James Dean’s car the night he died.
  They say he let you sit behind the wheel.
You hit the gas and kissed him till he cried
  And just before the crash, he made you squeal.
You were the one who gave those stupid pills
  To Marilyn and said, “Take twenty-seven.”
And you told Hemingway: “Time is what kills,”
  And bought the shotgun that blew him to heaven.
And now you’re here beside me at the bar,
  Buying me shots and laughing at my puns.
I say: “What will it be?  A speeding car?
  A stroke?  A heart attack?  A blaze of guns?”
     “Oh no,” you purr.  “Just something sweet, like this,”
     And stroke my cheek and lean in for a kiss.

copyright 2010 Matthew J Wells

Sonnet for Leni

It’s not your death that hurts--it’s what comes after:
  The way the loss gets slowly wiped away
Like distant echoes of remembered laughter
  Fading out day by day by boring day.
Time is like bleach.  Time fades the brightest hues.
  Time stops the bleeding while it blunts the edge.
Time bleeds the reds and washes out the blues.
  Time walks us step by step back from the ledge.
The brutal truth is, every wound gets healed,
  And sometimes never even leaves a scar.
The blade that is our soul will be annealed.
  It’s cold and cruel and the way things are:
     Absence, not Hate, is Love’s most patient rival;
     It’s not your death that kills--it’s my survival.

copyright 2010 Matthew J Wells

Sonnet

Once every month I take Death out to dinner.
He tells me who he’s killed and how they died:
The swine flu victim and the Oscar winner,
The author and the teenage suicide.
“God, you know everyone,” I say, impressed.
Death snorts and rolls his eyes and says “I wish.
Old age?  The stroke?  The cardiac arrest?
They’re just the ones who nibble when I fish.”
“Some pond you’ve got,” I say and shake my head.
I swim myself, but I’m nobody’s fool --
Everyone else on earth will wind up dead;
Not me -- I’m the exception to the rule.
  Each time I say, “My check,” and pay the waiter?
  “No problem,” Death replies.  “I’ll get you later.”

Copyright 2009 Matthew J Wells