They Kill You in Ugly Ways

They kill you in such ugly ways

when they take and twist you in the paper or

on television.

Some would rush you out of womb and into life,

rush you through and through and through it.

And what remains?

 

“Rushed to hospital,” where was “pronounced dead.”

 

They kill you in ugly ways with

ugly photos and the ugly details (and these they

pick like nits with the fine-tooth as glossed simians would)

and at the end of the long day,

you die when they tell you and are

buried

on a shrivelled third of the third page

of the papers. At the end of the long day,

 

they kill you in ugly ways.