Eulogies

Because sometimes the story they tell at the funeral is so far from the hurt and hurting person that you knew ..

Always I used to despise
The old lies:
Honey-coated sentiment
Dripping in sunlight silence,
Smelling faintly of polish and dust.

Dust to dust we are,
And the movement
Is lubricated with kindness
In the face of the abyss --
So often abysmal.

Laughter sounds forced
In the organ-toned solemnity.
Yet the flavor of memory
Wears a smile that jerks our hearts
(Unless a jerk).

Crude apotheosis
Anaesthetizes conscience from afar
For those whose memories are wrapped in silk,
And piled into the coffin of their fear,
And left to rot denying rottenness.

But for the others,
This is sandpaper on the scream of their injustice….

Now that time
Has imitated wisdom
I think again
Remembering
How hard it is to be human in this place.

Always the mind rewrites
Busily scribbling
The graffiti of our feelings across the barren facts
Trying to see the unseeable
Through the fog of our confusion.

And the deeper yearning,
Sword inescapable,
The cry to be forgiven –
Knowing the merciful
Are those the given mercy.

Let us be gentle
One to another
In the household of our grief:
Surrendering the pain
That can never now have closure.

Though our hearts may fracture differently,
Believe the Resurrection and the Life
Whose Kingdom has no end.