Barry Dempster - three lives/three deaths

1/

 Last life, no talent for reckless ambition or scissoring snowflakes out of old exams, no desire for long hugs or those bath balls that sizzle in the downpour, no time for playing with clouds or being driven mad by clocks that tock instead of tick, death was a computer sitting on a pair of
empty shoulders, sorting facts from impressions, storing moods by categories of time and place. Feel it memorizing you, counting its way through room after room of your choicest disappointments. Plug in, log on, the mouse in your right hand: a ghost in the grand machine.

2/

 This life, no good for therapy or running naked down a Hampton’s beach, no gift for paper airplanes or Humphrey Bogart impressions, no stamina for credit cards or staying put while everyone else flocks to the front of the church, death is the first thing you think about when
stripped of distraction, a peel down the back of your neck, your stomach flipped on its side, your knees bent. Feel it remind you of missed opportunities, a plucked hair, a picked-clean chicken wing. The mind/body connection: will telling want, even a cold sore doing what it’s told.

3/

 Next life, no longer a slave to bones or pens leaking in a pocket, no need for clean clothes or crackers to quell the nausea, no interest at all in program notes or those tiny heaps skunks dig on suburban lawns, death will opt for something fiery, something poured, a thin stream of brandy flowing over a numb dish of ice cream. Feel it scalding your inner corridors, steaming in the happy spot just below your heart. Reach for another spoonful,

cold/hot, nerves/feelings, swallow again.