MUSIC DOWN THE MORGUE

I sometimes see the world through stand-in eyes

required to face the fact of newly broken parts,

immobilised by indulgent recklessness;

yet disrespectful of the powers that be

that would rule us all and all our hearts

as we stumble, artless, through our useful years,

transient as a species, our lives full of cares.

 

Cut to the chase: I broke an ankle, a fortnight ago,

a bone located way below the focal point

of ordinary man’s quite ordinary sight, such that

little attention is paid to it beyond the town morgue,

where nothing and no-one passes unseen

by deep-frozen denizens literally laid low

 or, in alphabetical order, in lateral rows –

 

that is, side by side with the related feet and toes

of many local worthies whose ground floor appendages

must (and I muse) have been enthusiastically tapped

by one intent on inventing some bodypart percussion –

perhaps a new xylophone where six wooden sticks

beat an intricate mix, plaited and scored on old bones galore –

that might add some kick to our musical store.

 

But so flimsy that image of bridges to fame – a rope or

narrow plank – that sways as the gods stop by for a while to

smile and (mildly) make fun of we funny old things that get

confused with the news and tied up in knots, most

of our own making. Many drive miles to a beautiful bay,

park by the toilets, then picnic, then home – nothing gained,

nothing learned; no swap of bay-blue forget-me-nots.

 

The gods and goddesses chuckle and cluck: they have

observed the absurd, the surround sound of men

who might have absorbed their manifestation, which

I’m sure would count in the final reckoning, in the written CV.

Yet they let the gods be, undisturbed and unused,

so near yet so sadly far. Ah well, unlike deities, they will come

and they will go, lambs to their sole god’s beckoning.

 

I look at my disgraced nethermost joint and it

reminds me of walks where I have plodded instead.

I shiver in case it helps; it does, as a pup yelps as it faces the fox.

I recall the morgue, the fine new xylophone, then plummet in panic,

realising that at either end one just slides right over, into the abyss.