”Time of Death”
Few things are certain in life, as a matter of interest,
you work ‘til you die and are taxed for the privilege.
Our family business leaned on this premise too —
as black and as grim as our cheap polyester suits.
My job as Head of Funeral Direction required a want to embrace
positive change so business turned over, just not in their graves.
The modernisation of burials is often revised
to ensure our pockets as lined as the coffins supplied.
This clock had survived my Grandfather, and his before him,
so the concept of time waiting for no one rang with importance.
Its hands were enormous, with a face set in tenebrous black,
expression as blank as pallbearing professionals have.
The ready example epitomised all gravediggers should be
I hadn’t just tinkered beneath it, so much as built a MACHINE!
By increasing the speed of its gear chain to automate the procedure
its spade could dig deeper than any man, without taking a breather.
The cost of labour was cheaper and graves appeared in abundance
with its centralised bevelled eye overseeing production.
But without the people to put inside the plot thickens as well
every ditch that it delved meant a bigger hole I’d dig for myself.
The funny thing having dealt with death is the changes it inhibits
and some say that it elicits strange behaviours in the living.
I aimed to save the business from ever-dwindling debts
but never came to make a killing in the
literal sense.
Now several victims are buried after being choked to their deaths
only instead of the dearly departed, it’s
me in over my head.
With no body left to turn to, no place to vanish and hide
in the back of my mind I know it’s all just a matter of time.
So I glance up at my invention as it’s pendulum falls
better of course to be buried alive by it than the stress of it all.
I set it to automatic and watch as its cold, black hand twitches
my last gasps ticking away slowly before the taxman visits!