Plain Talk

I like plain talk.
I’m not into
fancy vocabulary, or putting
more syllables into the air
than are strictly necessary,

so when I say
I do not care about
the deaths
of famous people I do not know,
I’m being dead honest.

I don’t care about them
in the sense that there’s nothing gained for me
in thinking of their ends.
I don’t believe any death
is untimely for the dead;

I think they’re fine with how they go,
at least after the fact, and after lives lived
in the light of everyone’s incessant concern,
I suspect there’s a measure of relief
in having something to call their own:

a private second, perhaps gone at once,
that allowed them to be completely themselves.
We can’t take that from them with our false grief.
It’s thief-proof.  It’s all some of them
have ever held all to themselves.

Even when a friend dies I know I weep for me,
not for them, no matter how they chose
to go. Whether by letting the end come at will,
or by reaching for a welcome gun or friendly pill,
it’s a thing worth having: the peace

of knowing you’re at last beyond
the speculation, the insane thought
that others have that you might be the one
who helps them live forever.  It’s perfect at last, this life,
now that it will soon be forgotten

and is no longer exposed to the prying fingers
of those who’d get inside it
hoping to find themselves there.
You were barely in it, yourself.
You were glad to see it go.