Death Visits

spwilcen

Death Visits

Sleeping, or thinking I was sleeping, I dreamed.
Or sleeping, dreamed I dreamed.
Dreaming or not, I met Death,
In person.
Death was not there to explain my eternity.
My time, Death said, once again, delayed.
Death rested,
Overburdened,
Too much to do in too little time.
Too many to visit, to guide, to reassure, to cajole, to threaten.
To insist to those who refused their appointed time.
Failing that, to steal them from life.

First, vivid incense interrupted sleep.
Or stole its way into dreams.
That first notice of Death embodied,
Was sensing something unreal,
Thick and sweet,
Then too sweet, nauseating.
Struggling, I refused breath.
Still, the stench invaded,
Reeking rotting human flesh
From a valley strewn with Spartan corpses.
Mid-dream’s carbon black weakened, exposing
Carrion’s veil, Death’s breath.

A morbid smirk further broke midnight’s grip with light.
Death’s thin-lipped, ragged grin bared stiletto fangs.
Sharp jaw, sunken cheeks ashen and hollow
Lay below coal bed orbits imprisoning blood red globes
Vacant save pinpoint pupils, quasar furnaces.
Twitching, sharp ears, frostbitten black,
With varicose lobes, quivering in anticipation,
Searched for muffled moans of those lost or losing.
A broad, flattened snout with porcine nostrils
With each breath flared wide and eager,
Drawing-in every trace of air to sniff out pain
Of souls in need or declared want of service.

Death’s hair electric, black and white,
Swept from his forehead across his skull
To the nape of his neck,
As if pomaded permanently from travels
At the speed of eternity to and from hell and deeper hell.
Death’s voice, thin and brittle, irritating, I realized,
Designed to drive rusty spikes through souls.
His laughter and breathing labored and deep,
Warning what was taken-in never returned.
Death placed his cold, bony hand on my shoulder,
And promising to return, spun away leaving me there,
His gait not of walking but an ethereal, effortless slide.

Darkness deepened, anew; Death cursed over his shoulder.
Surely a curse, as the air froze.
Clubbed by cold, then knifed by heat,
I awoke,
Or escaped one dream to another.
Sweating and shivering,
Anxious to be conscious,
I closed then re-opened my eyes.
At last, awake.
The air, what was that –
That sweet sickening smell?
My breath, or Death’s?

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© spwilcen 2021

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spwilcenwrites “Portrait of Death” 12/28/2021