So it went.

...

Beneath the surface, moisture started pouring into the corpse. First, after a few days of rain, the soil saturated, the wooden box began to warp. And mud and worms and the occasional critter discovered this tasty trove. And they ate of its meaty parts. And the they defecated on the corpse. And soon, what was still left of the corpse was plump and crawling with bacteria. The eyes fell apart and holes opened up throughout the torso exposing the empty cavity where the organs had once lived. Nothing went to waste, some was eaten and what was not simply decayed more and more until it was no longer flesh, or goo, but soil. And this was the story of all pieces of this once-was person, from being to corpse, to goo, to ooze, to soil. The bones took much longer. And trees pushed roots through the cavity to disassemble the skeleton until no recognizable order could be found.

Eventually, nothing was left except fertile soil and compost. And that was that.

Celebrity Death

Listen:

To the story of a creature,

of the skulking un-dead variety.

How horrid!

His heinous countenance,

Crumbling and decaying,

At once drying out and oozing.

Hideous!

But to peace not

will this pitiful post-person go.

Sweet death is distant.

Fantasy.

And not some heavenly death, mind you.

No wings, no halos.

No non-sense, only non-ness.

A black void, lacking shade and space.

Such simple nothingness,

Will not greet this creature.

No, our heinous friend,

Maggot ridden,

Is paraded about, as a puppet on strings.

By some unholy master

tweaking and pulling,

And proding.

Poke, poke.

Still dead.

Irreverent and profitable spectacle,

Is this distraction from death, sweet and simple.

Our deceasing dummy dances,

Effortlessly through the air.

Crumblings streaking through the sky.

Bits and pieces.

What would chicken little cry?

For this is not sky!

As chunks of those ceasing to be,

Spiral through the sky,

From that towering death pedestal.

Here below, as our once-was flails,

Effortlessly through the skies,

His pieces enter our lives.

A heaping hunk of rump,

Rends the morning newspaper.

Oodles of nervous noodles,

Bespeckle our tee vees.

Muscular matter stratifies,

As mud,

Atop our magazines.

The news, now befouled,

Buried and unrecognized,

'Neath flesh and sinews.

No peace, until the last piece

Of dismal, dank, decaying death,

Has descended to our delight,

And is devoured.

Some capitalist cannibalism,

Eating what once was our own.

Yum!

Once in pain, they passed into death,

But they perpetuate un-dead,

Their rotting remains, ransacked,

And ever remaining,

As stains on the age of information.

Peace-less as piece-less.

At the foot of the pedestal standing strong,

Ever nourished by rich soil,

Fed by fecund futureless fanaticism,

And the crumbling of civility,

All round.