Recycled Poem

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

This is a mockery, is it not?

   First, because no one knows.

Second, because we need to think

We know where we’re going:

Into the earth as a solitary wrapped being,

   Or into the ether as sacred ash,

Thrust at once to mix eternally

   With the destination of our choosing.

Except that our blood is separated, rinsed without ceremony

as byproduct. Neither cremated nor buried with us, as us. 

Our life force reduced to flushable waste.

Buried or cremated, no matter!

First action is blood down the drain.

What’s not leaked, lost or splattered

Is simply let into public pipes

With endless liquids and waters. Having no use in current form,

Accepted by county facilities everywhere, to process for reuse.

Soft poetic ending to body + blood

The great equalizer and symbolically correct

For whose blood is royal anyway?

Practiced in a quiet dark room, let’s say,

By the one society has charged with such task.

Oh, just let our blood mix underground

   With others who share the same end time,

With human secretions and golden nectars,

   Whether puss or pee, champagne or dishwater.

One last mix in departure with such fluids

   As varied and random in death as in life.

One last commingle with the human condition

Before being processed, in other words: recycled.

I did write this in April, but not today. Something I submitted to a publication, and got rejected - my first, yay! Sorry to anyone on mobile. It probably won't trickle down your screen the right way.