Words and Lines

Funerals

by Tris Kerslake

I like some funerals. Especially the wet and weepy kind, the kind you see in films, Where the woman who done him wrong is inhumed, to orchestral strains As the sun sinks slowly in monochrome.

I like it more when the scarred man in the black hat, whose lisp has annoyed me for reels shuffles off his Smith and Weston, and is planted deeply in winter. Enabling him to grow his character for the next funeral.

I like it best with special effects and lasers. Where I can watch a thousand times as planetary millions are engulfed by androids that can never die, but occasionally nod off, to reawaken in the sequel.

I don’t like The Friday Kind. With approved time off work, wondering how long the flowers will last beside the stringy grass and gravelled paths, among the leaning stones and nesting birds.

I like it less in back gardens. Between the rhododendrons and the fence. Under the hasty bindweed where the claggy earth coats the shoebox and the little twiggy cross.

I like it least of all on sunny afternoons, when everyone seems either deaf or mad in purchased black. And all my thoughts surround the fact that I cannot rewind.