When I'm Gone

© 2013 David Jasmin-Green

I don't want to rot ingloriously
in the sticky clay of a sickeningly quiet
country churchyard when I'm gone, dear.
Bury me instead beneath sweet tarmac
under some anonymous conurbation,
for I long to hear
the pitter-patter-fizz of acid rain
eroding the dank roof my mausoleum,
I long to feel the salts of sulphur dioxide
playing tunes upon my ribcage
as it percolates through my humble remains
and gently dissolves my heathen bones away.

Don't sentence me to an eternity
in a lush summer meadow
or the mellow shade of a brooding wood;
not for me a rhapsody in blue,
I don't want my soul to soar away
on the wings of an azure dove
while my body decomposes
on the sombre scree slopes
of a barren windswept peak.

When I'm dead, dear,
bury me where they store plutonium
surplus to national requirements.
Derivatives of strontium ninety
would gloriously decay
along with my mortal remains
and future archaeologists might one day
studiously carbon date
the exact day of my demise.

When I'm gone, inter me beneath
a cross of steel and concrete
where for all eternity I can contemplate
the scab spreading north, south, east and west
and there, concealed and snug
I can leisurely ponder
the problem of this urban fester
relentlessly munching away
my commercially unviable wilderness.
Scatter my ashes to the four congested winds
where the delicate aroma
of carcinogenic hydrocarbons
will gently waft my dying wishes away
and spread my Earthly remains
on polluted waters,
my steady nitrate corruption
apocalyptic for all the world to see.