Deathbed Poets

Will hold your hand. Wipe your ass.

Tell tall tales about the coming glories,

Fetch your slippers, fluff the pillow.

Deathbed poets agree with all you say

And will echo it back with genuine pride

In their voices; but otherly, with a lofty

Flair. If weeping threatens to breach

The walls built against such onslaught,

It’s unlikely to bear surprises. Reborn

So often—who would ever want to be

Deathbed poets for them?—they wither

On vines, in bed with the roses. But this
Isn’t about their martyrdom, it’s about yours

And the magnificence that awaits you. 

Take my hand, and start at the beginning.

Tell me what things were like when you

Were little, or have you always been

This old, confined to this deathbed? 

In that case, you might be a poet, too! 

Take my hand; let’s make the thorns

And perfume sing till the nurse returns!