Outrun the Gun

I saw a body die tonight,
The first I’d ever seen;
And though it writhed like I thought it would,
Twisting under neon lights
Making blood lines on its skin,
Weep, though I knew I should,
I simply could not do.

There is something thrilling in the ecstasy
Of a body’s final drawn out breaths -
Screams almost and
Pounding beats
Still rhythmic, though frantic,
And harmonies,
Slowly sawing through heart strings,
Vibrating at the touch of dextrous fingers.

And though a hundred pairs of eyes regard,
Like students with mouths agape
At a cataclysmic corpse spread bare
Under the hot lights of the surgical stage,
They can do nothing to stop the grinding metal of death,
And cannot outrun the gun of destiny -
Already bought and already loaded
Already shot and already exploded.

Bass drum bullet holes
Tearing through t-shirts soaked in sweat
And raining on fingers outstretched
In awe or in admiration
Of that which stood dying there,
Swaying to the death music
Of a final dissonant symphony,
Extinguishing with a chord
So sweet you could almost taste it -
Saline like sweat on shiny skin,
Bejeweling the body before laying it
In its lonely and lightless grave.

Though long since waned and
Long since exhausted,
There is something exquisitely lovely
In the pale shiver of a dying body,
Drained and destructed
When it breathes its final quaking breath,
Falling like vapor diamonds on open lips,
Gasping a guttural hymn,
And singing, quite softly,
“Hallelujah.”

Death sounds like silence,
And then Death sounds like static,
Filling the space once occupied by Life,
With a quiet reminder to we the remaining,
That we must go on living,
And somewhere, in the white space
From a speaker in our heaving chests,
A drumbeat, or a heartbeat,
And the crowd let out its breath.