[Newspoetry] Real Family Men Die A Thousand Deaths

[Donald L Emerick]

Real Family Men Die A Thousand Deaths

"Poor Joe is dead, a candle lights his head"

Recently, another NB Obituary appeared
That all who know know also who is not.

An Obituary is a lasting peace for News,
for it starts the worms of history feeding,
letting them consume flesh that rots off,
letting them restore the waste to nature.

Oh, of course, there are those who cheat
even at the last and latest moment of life --
put their bodies safely in sealed tin cans --
but the shelf life of canned goods delays
and does not postpone forever the worms
who come to judge most quickly the dead.

Down at the University, a program buries
large animal carcasses, out on the point,
to let Nature clean up the mess of flesh,
to leave behind a mass of perfect bones,
skeletons that may then be hung on to,
strung and hung up for public exhibition,
but not as any kind of solemn reminder,
to other hippos, giraffes, and elephants.

This last, latest and greatest NB Obit
marked a man who may have had hits
that no baseball book will ever record.
I knew him second-hand, which is not
to say that I knew of him only by News,
but to say those that I knew knew him,
and, only by sheer accident, did I not
meet him at an informal social function
where formal attire is almost required,
where one must always dress, properly.

Who was this man that I almost knew --
what was he to Hecuba or me to Mecca?
Well, this was reputed mobster Bananas,
Joe to his friends (if any), I suppose, and
Don of a rather large and dominant family,
One that knew how to live and how to die,
as they had the know-how for life or death,
to make small personal problems go away.
Joe claimed to be High King for All Kings,
To be a merciless, but benevolent despot,
who ruled because ours is a dirty world,
where dirt no longer refers to organic soil.

In a down-and-dirty world, dirty secrets
will sprout for growing public knowledge,
unless someone takes dirt out of dirt,
takes the dirt out and buries it deeply,
where nothing more is ever heard again,
and this shall be bond, this dirty secret,
that Omerta shall betray no confidences,
in the greatest confidence games of all:
no one shall know anything because
no one shall live to tell of foul deeds.

For a time, after I divorced my first wife,
I half-thought I was a personal problem,
a blemish that the family might remove,
like a sore pimple on the butt or a nose.
But nothing happened, no kiss smacked,
and I lived to this day to tell such a tale --
as I was never into the family business,
and thus knew nothing of anything at all.

If I had ever had needed a greater proof
of my total insignificance to everything,
I can not think what that other proof is.
To be or not to be was answered for me,
for if I had not gone on being, I would be,
and if I went on being, then I had no being.

Well, anyway, as I was never quite into it,
I may not say that I was also left out of it.
Instead, all that I can say is, I once knew
A man who may have worked for the family.

A Banana son said, in the NB Obituary,
"Dad had every skill that great CEOs do."

Amen says that such a feller had to die.

Thanks for listening,
Donald L Emerick
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