the ubiquitous hearse..aka..kaddish the musical
Frank Stanford 1975 Archives & Ephemera
i am actually not death-obsessed what i am is uber-alive +this
is why i flirt with the beast so to understand his mysteries
his glory
i expect
my ashes
will continue
to sing
just turn up the volume
come Spring my name
in 5 languages
if you have watched the final breath you are intimate with death
3 times the charm now poet is pals with the Great Reap who will
creep over the bedsheets +kiss her on a crepeycheek
(okay..enough with the rhyminmaudlin)
this the most gentle
inhale/exhale
one will ever meet
bye bye
the creek was full of tadpoles later squished frogs on the driveway
(aprill it’s about the frogs..) but you didn’t really consider them dead
now flat +quite beautiful all black fluid +seeping
53 years later you ride in the hearsemobile of your fabulous mother
(not really dead either) whose rings you wear cautiously oh the mystery
she wore them better her hands bigger her heart pure laine child
Saturday at the ballet 35 dancers deep weeping +throwing themselves
through a gap in the curtain blackabyss when a 1960’s pristine hearse
glides onto the stage (!) to Ravel’s Kaddish 1914
your husband’s ghost stitches sing
holy radiation burns aquiver
neither of you flinch or seep
__
..an artist should carry his death like a priest his breviary..
( Heinrich Boll 1917-1985 Nobel Prize winner ..dead at 67)
Fall 2025 ..memento mori eh
songanddancegirl 