Graveyard Pleasures

Deacon could not bear the death of his wife, Heather, his marigold flower, his little Sun, his universe. She had been gone for three years now, but to him they seemed like three days, not even twenty-four hours. He did not have a child laughing with the warmth of her heart, an offspring crying with the tenderness of her tears, a progeny living with the rhythm of her breath. He only possessed the memory of her existence and her grave.

He visited her still bed every day, when no living creature was there to intrude upon his second home. He sat upon her marble blanket and talked to her for a long while. He told her about his dreadful day without her and listened to her silent words, which only the trees in the vicinity could hear, a few closer plants could listen to, worms could unearth after they had been said. He then had supper with his wife. He ate some of the food, tasted the rest, and the earth around her grave stomached the remains.

He kept her bed very clean and made love to her hard skin, spreading his sperm all over her grave. The spermatozoa rushed to their rapid death since there was no womb to sustain them for a certain while. He kissed each letter of her carved name, the "H" making him think of their house, the "e" reminding him of her eyes, the "a" alluding to her ass, the "t" standing for all their tears, the "h" symbolizing her hair, the "e" denoting everything that he had lost, and the "r" posing for his way of saying au revoir, goodbye, in French, leaving her before the falling of the night.

He was married to a grave, he made love to a stone, he lived with a memory, yet he appeared happy and content. When friends introduced him to single women, whether their singleness was desired or acquired, he always kept the acquaintance brief out of loyalty to his wife. “But she’s been gone for a long time,” they would say. “She is alive in my mind and my heart,” he would always reply. "My marigold flower, my little Sun, my universe is Heather," he would add occasionally.

The years passed because someone was counting them, and he grew older and farther from his recorded birth. Yet, no matter his age, on their wedding anniversary, he would bring red sweet wine, usually a Porto, and blue-and-white potted flowers: a toast to her life and an additional ornament for her grave. He would caress her white ageless skin and spend the night beside her: the living lying with the dead. Early the next morning, he would part from his beloved and leave her a poem that he had written with his blood.

When he finally died over two decades later, he was buried beside her: the dead lying with the dead. The graveyard never knew again the pleasures of life, for the funerals kept filling it with the pleasures of death.

...

Ode to Greek Flowers

There was a time when flowers were pretty,

The trees tall, and love sporadic

And too bitty

As it flowed into Arcadic,

The ancient and the forgotten, pity.

It is not at present as it was then;

I can feel it within,

And on my grin,

All flowers have become more beautiful again.

...

Life has taken a turn for the better,

The flowers, deific, gifted

With each letter,

As they proceed forward, lifted,

The god, and the goddess as my petter.

It is monumental with noesis;

I can see it without,

With not much doubt,

All Greek flowers are blue and white and with gnosis.

...

What else could be expected tomorrow,

As the flowers will wilt, indeed,

With each ago,

As they grow and turn into weed,

Their mere beauty, a memory aglow?

Is there any solace when we are dead,

As I could love thee now,

With not much how,

As all flowers turn Greek when I could see ahead?