Spike is Best

I remember how the funeral home
removed my mother's smile;
the pall of their procedures
in the cask at the end of the aisle.

My dad's complete dishevelment
the morning he up and went,
as though to spurn his lifelong body,
not closing his mouth: they did the same to him -

closed his mouth, buttoned him down,
just like they wiped my mother's beam in wax;
the masterstroke of last passion features
levied with a dolt-world's leave-taking tax.

"We have done our best to make this countenance
into proper corpse" was each retroactive attempt,
and I laugh; we are laggers even to done tasks,
and only the living make death masks.