Death is Beautiful

by Ben Szwediuk
(Reading, Berkshire, England)

Death Is Beautiful (Salome)

A goodbye long overdue I bid,
whispered from a carcass long picked bare.
Like screams, across the desert of the grotesque heart,
you sentenced to an eternity of despair.

I implore, do not allow your loathing
to fill your phial once marked “disinterest.”
For what manner of man,
or beast,
or spirit,
could endure such tantalising, transient tortures?

How can I hold brief what my soul yearns to keep?
A smile on my face, that aches so to weep?
Stand tall and proud, spit banalities;
As I drop to my knees,
To scream the ignominy of reality.

Death- so black, so beautiful:
though not so much as you.
Pity me once,
with the dagger of your dark radiance;
make me beautiful too.
The end makes us all beautiful,
but never so beautiful as you.