Policy

[tectak]

When an employee asks about bereavement
removing the splintered wedge under the door
and sitting before the computer stands by

the radio puts down its saxophone for the news.
A family member has died. She is
hoping to travel back a few days

to settle the house and service.
When an employee asks about bereavement,
the foreigner with a familiar face,

it sends the mind bumbling down cobble stones
since paved over, to a church;
lifting a casket, handles gnawing

grooves into a younger palm,
surrendering the shuttered shell
to the arms of a hearse

before returning to the question.
When an employee asks about bereavement,
the first response is this breath of memory,

inhaled and quiet like a candle
spent after the hum of a heater is heard
again within a waking house.

Then a manual is grabbed from a top shelf
and a distant page is found, already
sterilized and prepared to be shared.

Hi geoff,
Death of a concept methinks. Good stuff in this parcel, but it gets broken in the unwrapping.What good reason, no...just any reason...can you give to justify the fragmented enjambments and bitty breaks, the atrocious lack of explanatory punctuation, the stumbling gait?
I took the trouble to write this whole thing out as prose, then introduced the novelty of sensible meter. I will not print it out here, as there are glaring grammatical googlies...try it and repost. Look, we are all entitled to whimsical wanderings but if you post it here then expect boring requests for conformity...get it right then write it wrong. Don't write it wrong then expect others to right it
Best,
tectak