after you’re dead, there’s a funeral, red.
i discovered this recently, except i wasn’t
invited to show up, new, old or otherwise.

in my place was piled up wood, grey,
and lotsa brush all crackly-brown,
a stand-offish, prickly thorny-crown.

they set that half-truth fire blazing and incendiary,
mis-remembers and other (missings) hidden inside
curses, excuses, judgements of indigo echoing depth.

they thought me bound and captive but epithets
were synonymous with white-washed choices made-unmade,
were effigies hanging in flames, in smoke, in spirits.

then that noose just snikked up tight around their heart
like a golden curtain drawn but never rising on a play
written and rehearsed but never actually performed.

just as that funeral, red, was really never
held for me, but just that phantom never-was,
that effigy.