Music For Funerals

Revised, and set to music for The Duende Project.

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It seems to happen often
that I receive
a phone call to request music
for a friend’s funeral.

This is my role in my circle,
my holy manacle,
this ability to know the voice
of personal grief intimately well;

the understanding
of which songs will speak for us
the way we would
if we could stop our voices from cracking.

When it happens I run through a list
in my head
at once, choosing
only after some thought.

Sometimes I reach for the guitar,
thinking that maybe this time
I will compose a song that will
make all future requests moot.

It never happens,
but I still think of it from time to time,
imagining that all at once
I will know

the song I have always
wanted to find: the one
that, if played well enough,
will bring them back.

When I go, don’t make anyone
choose songs for my funeral.
When I go, burn me like sheet music,
burn me like hell money,

burn me the way children
burn their parents’ love letters.
Lift any uncrumbled pieces from my ashes
with drumsticks held like chopsticks.

Set them in a tambourine,
take turns pounding it,
set me rattling against that skin.
Ring me out until we all grow hoarse

and our voices become
as soft and ragged as old clothes.
Make me into the song
I never could write by myself.

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Listen to the track here:  https://soundcloud.com/radioactiveart/music-for-funerals