My only fear 
about death is that
it will be merely
a doorway into
an existence 
much like this one

but devoid of 
all the relationships
that made this one
tolerable. Afraid I’ll
wake up after death

in a room with
a one-channel TV
and a bed, a microwave,
no telephone, no way
of communicating,
plenty of Pop-Tarts
and Hot Pockets, 
running water, 
no door. Maybe a window

and outside the view is just
fog, dim outlines of buildings
too far to shout at and make contact
with those who may be
behind those windows
feeling like me. 

On the TV?
Reruns. Nothing but
reruns of 
the news on the last day
I was alive.  

No one to argue with,
no one to love or hate,

no one at all but for 
the smarmy head of 
the anchor
smiling past me
at someone I can’t see,

someone I don’t know, 
someone I somehow
madly desire.

Blinds drawn but skewed,
broke down trees around
the back, a trailer’s load of
thin scrap metal in the yard,
stake and dog chain in a circle
of bare dirt, no dog, no car
in the driveway; nothing to show
who was here except debris
and junk and none of it
odd enough to connect to 
a unique person. Anybody
could have left this stuff here
and run and no one would be
the wiser, could have been
you, could have been me…

closed my eyes, remembered
that shambles, opened them and
looked around at these shambles,
re-shuttered my eyes; it remained 
clear that I am the shambles, I drag
the shambles with me. Scrap and mess
all over and too old to run from it now.
Got to sit with it. Got to sit in it
and examine hope and lethargy
and my lazy, lazy living. Got to choose
to clean it up or leave it, head to
the next world with none of it, 
its utter inanity a perfect epitaph.