Death does not scare me; 

It looks like the cover of a book - 

I have ripped out it’s last page for fear of 

It ending. I may not 

 

Read that loose penultimate leaf. Yet nobody but I 

Is permitted to design it: this last shard left 

Holds my dying breath, and the words 

 

words words 

words 

 

I have left behind riddle the spine 

Until it is hollowed up. On some cement shelf; 

It’s fondled, daily, by an old man with a cane 

With questions about 

 

Who where what and when 

To pass the time of his own 

 

Crippled and unending pages.