DEATH OF THE UNDERTAKER (Poetry)

"A drop of ointment is enough for embalment,

The cost of living is not for the dead's enchantment..."

His apprentice hummed to himself the master's favorite tenet

The graying skin puffed with rot from the dermis within

Make-up artist tries one last time to cloak the mushiness still

Caked in multiple layers of browning chalk, yet unyielding it seemed

The grandcrier of the troupe lunged forth the coffin

Shedding reptilian tears purged by a clove of onion handy

Gazing deep at the stranger wishing that he could have known her

Imagining the man dead was her father, husband or brother

She even recalled memories of when she was much younger

The night her uncle accused her of witchcraft and burnt up her fingers

Anything she could do just to moist up her tear glands

The arsenal of pepper, Robb and Mentholatum starting to fail now

Perhaps another shot of pure water could help in the matter

The spraypainter sat in the crowd perplexed more than angered

A bill for the knockoff watch he had silverned, adorned by the carcass

Sparingly had he grazed on his paint that the cost be cheaper

The high table gleamed from bottles of very dear Cognac and Champagne

Among the family members sat the winer ever unfazed

Taking stock of the vine table, staving unforseens and mistakes

Ushers guarded guests to the "ogogoro" kegs just in case

Lest some drunken fool pops a Möet off of their pay

Lessons the master taught never taken in vain

Bellows from the tethered rubenesque bulls died off at morning

Metamorphosed into sheets of fried Titus fish mingled in seasoning

The herdsmen criticized bull renting, but the cash deposits helped them adore it.

A cue signaled by the apprentice sends a young woman screaming

Clasping her head, wrapper in the air exposing underwear, "Why?! Why?!! O God, why this?!

Stamping his feet left then right, a colleague sways and collapses

Priest stares at his time rehearsing his eulogy again

The next burial was just a kilometre too far for this time waste

Same chapter, same verse, same sermon: "Ashes to ashes..." he prays

Dust comes pouring over plastic shoutings and wails

The undertaker looks on in dead silence, nothing to say

Watching his own abused body interred in his grave.