Afterwards, (after whatever deserved
or undeserved version of your death
I’ve thought up shows up, shut up

in a leaden box and drowned in a lake,
dropped into a cast iron frying pan, cast
down headlong from some sickening

height, this precious convention of martyrs,
this the dawning of the Tarnished Age,
this, as always, my last parade of plaster

of Paris dipped injuries galloping across
the fireplace mantle; and because,
ideally, no one else will be home,

someone you love must come home,
O expectation! and find you, O discovery!
bleeding your ten pints of Red 40 Lake

like a red flavored popsicle melting
into the hallway, migrating, O pioneer!
toward the living room as though

even in death you couldn’t stay put or
have enough,) someone will phone with
the news and I’ll almost wish it wasn’t true.