Bookending our VHS library
In the basement closet, beside ski suits,
Is our family’s one-man Capuchin Crypt,
A skull Dad kept from med school that just sits,
Waiting to be played with, bored, unburied.

Whose skull? A whoreson mad fellow’s it was,
The King’s jester, whose voice was once so clear,
Clearly a fool for him to end up here.
Maybe someone magnificent, then poor,
Who, if praying, never had a prayer.

I’ll hold the skull and think about his life.
Parents who loved him, children, and a wife,
The wind in his face on a summer drive,
His spirit storming through the skull’s brief night.
Here is the proof that he was once alive:

His tooth-jeweled jaw, lashed to his skull with springs,
Which I marionette to make him sing
967-1111
Call Pizza Pizza hey hey hey. Heaven
Is here, with me, our suburban basement,

Where, after life’s indignities and glory,
Your organs mustered, bequeathed to science,
Having spoken your last words to family
—Noli Timere, Memento mori—
You’re interred with The NeverEnding Story.