Macabre musings on the mausoleum’s
stone-eyed inhabitants stuffed
with the magic of second life:
Oils, calabash of crystal plucked
from the caldera’s radiating grove,
symbiosis of fungal spore and mountain
fern chafed in the palms of resurrection,
while the dark side of Apollo’s pestle
pulverizes faith and hope in the elixir bowl.

Delicate blossoms beside your head
shield your ear from my irreverent thoughts
as I peel the gossamer from your face.
Sister, you still look as you did, except for
the Snake God offering of zombie pallor.
The coroner’s gilt-tipped pen
will rewrite history when you return.

Our moon once shadowed from dissidents,
its cache in caliginous stone now vandalized.
Crushed ribcage, flesh purple black and
phosphorescing, corpse of a gutted baby
at the dead dead mother’s feet. I turn away.
I want to throw up, get out of this place.
To hell with life after death.
They never come back the same, anyway,
as if they’d lost their soul or something.