By J.J. Tindall
Funeral for a Bastard Year
Four stockbrokers took residences in Italy. Four hundred nobodies lost everything.
– Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby
I know where the bodies are buried:
Lincoln Park before the zoo was there.
Pre-Fire the land with graves was filled.
I move to add our Annus Horribilis.
Sorry, honey, if I don’t change the pace.
I can’t face another day.
Aspiration upon a table etherized
now embalmed upon a rickety catafalque.
A glass hearse drawn by black horses:
clocking hooves, shrieking springs, yawping axles.
Cheap tin eagles washed in thin gold enamel
preen in effigy on the coffin handles.
Rape, ruin, repossession and remorse.
Grief, gloom, devastation and divorce.
Let the black hooves clock in rhythm.
Let the glass hearse sway in tandem.
Load your rage atop the cheap tin eagles.
Let the rat-bastard corpse rot regal.
Renew, rebound, rejoice and release!
Let the mud-soaked maggots feast.
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J.J. Tindall is the Beachwood’s poet-in-residence. He welcomes your comments. Chicagoetry is an exclusive Beachwood collection-in-progress.
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More Tindall:
* Music: MySpace page
* Fiction: A Hole To China
* Critical biography at e-poets.net
Posted on December 29, 2009