Describe What You do for a Living

 
 
The firm was called Graves Brothers and stood just off the High St in Bury St Edmunds,
three immaculatly polished Mecedes Benz estates with extended wheel bases stood in a nearby yard. A horse drawn hearse was housed in a small barn, a black cob was hired from a local stables to pull it when required. As a junior partner, I was transport manager but for some unfathamable reason I was knicknamed CD, generaly considered back room staff, "Dont you go skipping off CD we need two cars by 10am, Mr Graves Snr quiped. Not allowed to meet the grieving relatives, just told to nod and look deferential. I always thought I could carry off the empathy performance as well as all the old guard.
Right, I thought better get the mortors cleaned out, You would think an easy job, but all those wreaths and flowers harbour a host of nasties, insect, spiders, wasps and sometimes bees, what worse than the funeral party screaming behind the driver, trying to get the windows open, Its enought to revive the corpse. I hear you ask did It ever happen causing an accident ? yes and a chilling one its is!  
Sometimes we must conduct a funeral for somebody intestate, with no finance or equity, paid for by the local authority these are heart wrenching affairs. A truly horrific accident when the driver was surrounded by a huge swarm of bees on the way to a creamation completly blocking the drivers vision. The hearse turned over after crashing into undergrowth, I was sent to recover the coffin in the utility van.The coffin lid badly damaged. I removed it back at our premisis, the corps wearing a distinctive smirk. I remembered the bible quote "death where is thy sting. grave thy victory" apparently the recently deceaced being a bee keeper, having hives on his allotment.  
After an article published in the local rag and picked up by the media, Henry Sugar had a Just Giving page that raised enough for a decent funeral, bees wax candles for each to light and an an open coffin,I was allowed to dress him in his white suit and hood, The hymn- How sweet the name of Jusus sounds- sung with gusto and  reflect on events and some presonal satisfsction to help with a final dignified closure  

CW:

sexual assault


Two friends sit
at a picnic,

at the beach.

One, a teacher.
A woman.

Into men.

The other, a waiter.
A man.

Into men.

So, she doesn’t need to fear
the request for sex.

Been friends since school.
And now, both twenty-six.

Life’s proceeding.
Will continue to.

The students
often scrabble.

And shout
at her.

And never
seem to

do work.

But she
enjoys her job.

She laughs.
Smiles.

Gazes at
the high noon sun.

Turns to him.
Smiles still deeper.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he grins.

“Glad I had the day off,”
she says.

Just then, she returns.

To. To that person.
That man.

Who claimed
himself her friend.

And… One night…
His hands.

She shudders,
as slightly as she can.

Turns back
to the cresting sun.

Then back
to him.

And she smiles.

Rent empties her.
Bills shear.

And life often thwacks.

But now, they can sit.
Here.

They can picnic,
two sunlit battlers,

illuminated warriors.

From the beginning of time
Monsters are real not just in nightmares
By candlelight under a full moon

Drinks my blood to live my sins
But he escapes my dreams
The mist of midnight reveals who he is

Only a few hours till sunrise clouds shift about
Sliver of Sun is a Crucifix to a black heart
Tv people misread the news
He died in 1923 but he’s killing at the millennium

Crossing the globe sewing murder
Drinking the blood of Las Vegas

Shot twenty times at close range
Tosses cops into the pool
Leaps from a window should’ve broken a wing
He lands like a cat running in darkness

Vegas girls on the run trying to keep their blood with them

Kolchak is The Night Stalker trying to save em
 
Find out where he dies until sundown
Slip in the house while he’s a Coffin
Looking to make Sunrise his final sentence

Making too much noise even to wake a demon sleeping
Las Vegas Man Hunt on a grand scale
Seconds before sunrise can I survive

Chases me down until doomsday
I grab a curtain pull some Sun to kill him

Drive a stake into his vampire heart
Kolchak is the Night Stalker

the ink like blood flows thick
seeping and bleeding onto whiteness
innocence trapped within cracks
flowing in glee into unread stories

chasing whispers, screams and laughter
in thin air imagined a killing fields
every alert eyes and ears ever eager
a vulture to news picking the carrion

there are truths and lies assumptions
to be untrue for the masses but the rest
wants the white bone to shaved off flesh
to scrutinize to grumble about or to airy chat

headlines scream blatantly on the screen
the papers painted in huge words shared
a byline on the frontpage to die for
a junior page enough to win a smile

digs for the dirt to upload horror
to share someone else's fear
tragedies eagerly sought for
deaths and disaster the first para

the heart of the craft
is tough and calloused
the soul deals in chilling refrain
in every truth told
at least
one a soul is slain