Left With Tombstones; Sickeningly Normal by Richard LeDue

Left With Tombstones

Realizing how small your life is,

especially next to a dinosaur skeleton

someone carefully dusted and cleaned

so we might see how old we aren’t.

A lifetime can’t even promise

we’ll ever be dug up

and our remains a curiosity

capturing imaginations.

Instead we’re left with tombstones:

overpriced, but prepaid if we’re lucky,

while the graveyards tell lies

about their own supposed immortality.

Sickeningly Normal

Never been lucky enough

to shake hands with someone famous

or sip wine with a best-selling author,

but I have spilled whisky in the bathtub

while trying to drown

the stink of every day

and I’ve watched so many movies

that I’ve gotten drunk

on all the happy endings,

which seems so sickeningly normal,

it must be the cure.