A Boy And His Funeral

Life gets dull without a FavouriteThing(tm), everyone needs a hobby or something to dribble over, a craze to ferment and for this starry boy it is funerals, and depending on circumstance, the events leading up to them. Strange? Maybe. Morbid? Definately. But there it is, death and its beautiful pomp is very attractive to me.
And before I am misunderstood it has nothing to do with wanting to be 'gothic' or any other attention seeking trend, I have spewed too many years (and too much blood) to be accused of that. Dame Erotica with her teenage skin cutting friends can rot, this kid is delighted by real tragedy. Not the stricken or the victims, my heart weeps for them, but the miserable circus. It is the hospitals, the drips, mortuaries, hearses, coffins, graveyard dogs and the march of the mourners which seduce me.
I have long wanted to create a sickbed in my home; bed white as a lilly, crisp and smelling of day old dissinfectant with two loud bursts of colour on either side at the head. On one side the bold, rich, red blood sack IV's, while on the other the lush green of grapes pitted by the almost neon glow of oranges. It could even be a recent death bed and I could fashion the pillow so that it had the dent of a head, now resting on a slab.
But alas it wouldn't last, I would get lazy and the let blood curdle and the fruit gather dust and mould. Better to simply be content in stories and pictures, which in this heartless, cruel world, come in an endless stream, fulfilling the appetite of even the most rabid ghoul.
The dance of death is all so fine, conjuring images of ravens in churchyards and busty widows in tight, black skirts sending indecent thoughts to the debauched inbox of my brain. From mourning to lust in one long hard on, it is a fantastic medley of emotions.
I often catch myself planning my funeral, I must have organised and reorganised it a thousand times. A black casket lined with yellow and white silk, my grinning corpse, idle within. Skin flushed because my spirit would be resting on the heaving breasts of a female preacher, who would arrive complete with sheer nylon stockings and garter holding a bottle opener to her leg.
The only tears I would want are tears of laughter, either at my past antics or peculiar tastes, or cheers that I finally escaped the mortal clutches of earth. Depressing speeches and dirges are not welcome, poets are the original rockstars God damn it! Get drunk and send my carcass off with a bit of style, balls to dignity. Ive never been a dignified creature so im not starting new habits as a corpse.
If ever there is a chance for the dead to have a heart attack, then I want one during my funeral. I want a full blown cardiac arrest with all the trimmings, if possible another death, more death rattles and bells to go with the silk laments.
It will be the last day anyone will ever honestly think about me so I want smiles (and even strippers), not bubbling lips and snot. Vive la Steve! Now resting in his cot, a slumber he had often thought and scrawled about. Rest in peace brother, is it good where you are? Is it all you imagined it to be? Are there endless frothy sumps of ale served by slutty seraphims with asses like perfect orbs?
I see no reason to act in an orderly manner, that would be a funeral for somebody else. I am shambolic, a hectic slab of meat, so it should follow that I be bid farewell in the same fashion. With Welsh hymns and drinking songs piped from the speakers. Or tapped out by an organist, the prudish sort, so that she winces at the songs about beer and sex.
People remember pain and death and the havoc they cause. So bold, so immediate, they arrive without apology and take with no remorse, like giant exclamation marks sprayed onto a page. The taboo where only the steely faced or grime obssessed visit, while the timid hurry by on their way to having children in order to attempt to ignore the calling of the cemetery.
I embrace the shadows, and everything that hides in them. I would have been one of those who chased the hangman after public executions, in order to buy a length of his rope. The imp at open casket affairs, not to pay any respects but to stare at the deceased and try to figure out what he or she was thinking. Death should not be a forbidden territory, but spoken of and celebrated daily as some cultures quite rightly do.
I love death shapes and all of its poses. Dying within a grip of breath, I sincerely delight in feasts of the macabre and revel in tides of the gruesome.