And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. --Walt Whitman  

Incandescent yet completely full,
death is masked by the tombstone illusion:
a magician with dandruff on the shoulders
of his greasy tux appears to disappear us
in puffs of corruption.

Yet what if this dreaded end
is only a beginning?
Recall the most intense pleasures
of your life and fill in the blanks.
With these, let us say, the wonders
of death will have only begun,
transcendent amends
for lives of both quiet
and noisy desperation.

Of course, this forbidden
apple of knowledge
would be mercifully withheld
lest we be lured, with the lemmings,
to sprint, over the cliff, into the sea.

Because even ecstasy has limits:
arriving in heaven, Captain Stormfield found
mounds of harps and haloes discarded in the clouds
by the eternally bored. Caught in the brilliance
of endless bliss, we may be tempted again
to summon the darkness,
live in a body, look out through its eyes,
feel the suspense inherent
in confinement to a self,
and end up just as we are right now:
rabbits who are always
being launched from a hat.

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Roger Midgett has had poems published in exhibition, Pontoon, and Presence. He was first runner-up for the 2006 Return to Creativity Poetry Awards. His poem, Passage, was set to music by composer Paul Lewis as part of The Last Poem On Earth: A Jazz Oratorio, that had its world premiere in May of 2007. Roger works as a Mental Health Professional and lives with his family on an island across Puget Sound from Seattle.
Website: http://www.myspace.com/rogermidgett
 

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summer 2007 | kaleidowhirl
books and chapbooks from authors in this issue