The Indian Restaurant Delivery Van and No Transmigration

When I am gone like Bene, staring wide

My eyes, when I am gone like Bene, gone

Where he went, we will be where deaths divide

And never bring us close.  Agamemnon

Stares, eyes in slits of gold, but in the dark

The mask is blankness.  Bene’s stare was blank.

No teaching is required.  The lesson, stark

And eyeless in his stare, did not hold ankh

Or Easter.  That delivery van brought

Death’s take-away.  The take-away.  Where went

His breath?  A person on the phone had bought

His breath and now his neckbone waggled—floppy, bent.

  When factors order death for me, his fur

    Will not bring warmth.  They will not bring his purr.

~ Phillip Whidden