BURY

      i’m interested in death rituals.

      maybe that’s a weird thing to say.

      when i say interested i mean,

      i’ve compiled a list.

      on it are mourning practices

      gathered across time & continents.

      it’s long & oddly comforting

      how no one knows a damn thing

      about what follows. i won’t

      share it with you, only say,

      evidence suggests neanderthals

      were the first hominids to bury

      their dead. also, i’ll say they

      didn’t possess a written language,

      which points toward interment

      as a form of document. the body

      is ink in the earth. the grave marker,

      a gathering together of text.

      the first written languages were

      pictorial & marked the movement

      of goods between peoples.

      i don’t know what to do with that

      but pretend death’s a similar kind

      of commerce: face stamped

      into a coin, what’s left of the body

      in the belly of a bird, two lines

      that meet to make a man

      alive again on paper. i know i know,

      ashes to ashes & all that dust

      to irreverent dust. i know everyone