Apologetics of a Cut Flower
Apologetics of a Cut Flower
by halifax
Who sent you? Hungry Death, you’re nothing but a middleman. You stand there like a trader, taking what is unappreciated to exchange it for profit. What do you profit in your trade? Skinny Hands, what I owe is paid. I forgot what mine was even worth. No sale for you today.
‘Tusks? Are you a big pig? You practice eating what others discard, growing fat from offal. Fat Death you smile wide and easy at me, like you know me. Show me the wisdom in your silence. I have none for you. Your wide-spaced teeth make me wonder out loud at how my hunger can die with a friend like you nearby.
Has the sun sent you? You’re nothing but a messenger. You came all this way just to tell me that the great fire thinks he can have his flicker back. I’ll give you this Sated Death, you are a patient messenger. You show me your clock but never check the time yourself. I can queue up like you, waiting here, late again. I’ll tell you this, when my fire goes out so does my sun. I’ll find my own way home thank you.
Tired Death? You find me like a long companion. An institutional life hems me in and here you are with the panting smile of a sheepdog. Dogs came down from wolves you know. Not that it matters, they still eat shared lamb for dinner. I’ve always been partial to cats. Their hunger doesn’t wait, and it isn’t quiet. The time they eat hasn’t come yet and I’ll sip black coffee till it has.
Ready Death finds me when I want it. I’ll pose for you. I’ll purr right up and brush your tall legs if I have to. You hand feed me all the tender bits I missed. I droop more now but I’ll sleep when my hunger does.
this is amazing, i love the different types of death and how the writer evades them and then the final acceptance at the end..
great work.
Thank you.
Each “Death” is a religion I have at one time or another subscribed to, (including my current one).
Great! loved that last verse. Overall a great idea and well executed.
Whew! …have had a long work week. I printed this piece and had some spare time today to read in the cab of my truck while listening to some Baroque…i had to turn the Baroque off. Reflective, senor. Death personified has many faces: Hungry, fat, sated, tired, ready, Brad Pitt, uh, strike that last.
Hungry reminds me of Christianity…we owed a debt that couldn’t be paid, he (Jesus) paid a debt he didn’t owe. “Trader” sorta makes me think of the ‘surrender’ aspect of ‘giving oneself over to Jesus’…maybe?
The 2nd stanza beginning with tusks brings to mind elephants which are many fold in India birthplace to Hinduism and Buddhism … “show me the wisdom in you silence” might be meditation, a practice of Buddhism. But then again, in the 2nd sentence in the 2nd stanza, we are asked: “Are you a big pig?” which could be what ‘Tusks?’ refers to in the first place…pork being taboo in many religions, Judaism especially?
The 3rd stanza with Sated Death being called ‘messenger’ repeatedly, makes me think Muhammed the prophet (messenger) of Allah…and with the mention of fire , being like the hot sun of a desert… Some of the sentences here indicate detail of religion, which some might call dogma, which i don’t mean to offend anyone, might be equated with some schools of Islam or Catholism, perhaps?
My guess for the 4th stanza was Judaism because of the lambs, and the cats remind me of the Egyptians with Osiris and Ra and those guys…but that’s sort of a dead belief that i don’t believe anyone practices anymore…unless it connotes New Age or something of the like.
The 5th stanza is your current religion…which is a foxhole religion missmash of Art, Poetry, Music, and crass enlightenment from idiots like me (network of friends…and community with the world?)… ok. It’s my bedtime. I’m dreaming of a future world where the DNA of 21st century poets are used to recreate us to a brave new world were we are crowned grand mayors of multi-million peopled cities and are granted harems and waterbeds and Egyptian Cotton pillows and Bungalow Palaces with arcade games and jacuzzis and kegorators with lager beer.
Yes, kegorators. Yes, lager beer. A new religion for the masses. This is my last beer, drink it in remembrance of the last time when I was over at your house and you only had one beer left.
I love you man.
In the 4 Abrahamic faiths one glaring implicit is there is only one death. It is the wage of sin, the only road out, how we come to be in the presence of the eternal but still only one kind. I know different deaths. Not many different ways to death but many kinds of death. I feel that a difference in the religions I have participated in has a death that offers something the members value. With that, my current choice of religion is one that holds out a Ready Death (acceptance).
That assumption makes me feel like no matter how we add up the life we lead the end result is the same. That doesn’t jive with my experience. I witnessed different personalities to the deaths I have encountered. There are commonalities between many of them but in some, as an observer, I think of as quite unique.
Being a Cut Flower Apologetic, I decided to use comparisions and “outsider” oberservations that are not canon to the religions I reference.