Obits

Author's Note: For The Lightning and the Lightning Bug's Dare to Share link up this weekend, the theme is "Loss." I wrote the poem below a few years ago, inspired by the Dave Mattews' song "Gravedigger." 

Dora Leigh Rex

Born 1948 on a Sunday in July

Was a terror from birth

Causing complications wherever she tread

The day she died

Was a relief to her surviving three sons:

Jimmy, Lewis, and Al

A Tuesday in February at 51

From complications due to too much corn whiskey

And fried chicken and not enough reasons to live

Her services took place the following Friday

To an empty house

Emanuel Sanders III

Manny to his friends

A sight for sore eyes born on the fifth of February

In 1976 to Mr. Sanders and his whore

A Madam from Queens with beautiful eyes

And a killer smile passed along to her baby boy

Manny to his friends

A joy to all

Died at 3:00 a.m. last Wednesday

A shame, a down and dirty shame

About the Cancer that ate away

Until Manny wasn’t Manny anymore

Baby Girl

With her soft blonde curls

Born and died within minutes

Of her short sweet life

Too much inside to take

Her mom didn’t care, not a mom at all

Just a victim of the times

Bleeding her booze and snorting her cocaine

Hating her life and that man who knocked her up

On a Saturday night flight

To oblivion where her baby girl is now

Happy and laughing a sweet baby girl laugh

Jon Winston Ivory

Killed thirteen people between the day of his birth

January 1, 1923

And his death

January 2, 1973

Fried to a crispy medium in the chair

Of little circumstance to those who hated him

To those he killed because he could

So Governor Warren killed Jon

A little revenge with an audience of fifty

Bloodthirsy witnesses waiting fifty years

For Jon to die

Jackson

No one knew Jackson or that his name

Was Jackson until he was dead

Died on a snowy day in December

No one knows for sure

A human popsicle that everyone ignored

For days on end until Old Mr. Guthrie

Happened upon poor Jackson

Hiding out beneath his cardboard haven

Hiding from death and hunger

Always knocking at his door and saying,

Jackson, you’re a tragedy that everyone ignores

Mattie Bell Krauss

A hundred and one

Died in her sleep

Her husband hasn’t cried yet

But waits now for his turn to go

With a curious little smile on his face

And a warm hug for his little girls

Not little anymore and sobbing over

Mattie Bell who lived the quiet life

In the best way

And died a quiet death

Now just waits for Bill to join her






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