by David Roderick

A bouquet of flowers.

A bouquet of flowers.
Maybe death would be preferable.
His life became extinguished like a damp fire-work.
There was no fan-fare, no trumpet alarum calls.
What drove him to this?
The excessive verbatim of garbage in compulsory quotidian doses?
Who will be remembered? And for what?
Who vaunted the system? The prematurely dead one.
No premature, nor mature, release date for him.
But a funeral expense –- a mere statistic –-
A blot on the army of friendly faces,
Smiling incessantly, but now all glum:
The managerial array of nurses, and health-care clinicians,
Diagnosed to impose laws pertaining to mental safety.
No missing piece of the jigsaw.
No moving forward.
Like life is a stagnant puddle of ditch-water.
At least he escaped. I must endure,
To listen to repetitive squawking of crystallised seagulls
Masquerading as people -– a sombre environment.