Those Pictures

An aging beauty queen’s frigid smile

Coy, stupid smirk

The superficial, terrorized look

Of an animal just before

The car careens into its impotent, lazy head.

That’s the face in those pictures.  

We will all be there someday

Make no mistake

With our heads bowed    

We’ll grasp, without acknowledgement,

Our reaper’s hand.

No sense in flirting

With the reaper,

He will cleave you in half

Before sending you to hell

Or wherever you’re going.  

The cat sits outside my bedroom door

Pawing to be let in

Not caring, like cats do,

Of the crisis tensing the molecules

Thickening the air in this room.  

I fucking hate

Surrender.  

But beauty withers

Always replaced…by something bigger

And better and more alive

Before it dies  

Again..and again.