Death Palaces

Two disconsolate supermarket plastic bags

Full of discarded clothing

Trousers, slippers, jumpers and shirts

Waiting to be collected by the next of kin

Here by Reception in the Death Palace

People come and go

But behind closed doors

Rest those on the Highway to Heaven

Dear friends have we seen 

In their beds quite serene

With drugs like morphine

On the slow treck to where?

Old friends visit, ex wives and new partners

All anxious to say the right thing

And the man in the bed searches

Eyes of the visitors for a hint

Of what is to come.

Long to go?  A visitor asks.

A few weeks maybe

Oh that's too long the doctor says

We need your bed - off you go.

The taxi pulls into the parking bay at Reception

Engine running the driver approaches the doors

"Taxi!" he calls loudly

And a tired looking man looks up

He carries the supermarket shopping bags carefully

To the taxi door, places them on the seat

And then sits beside them, patting the clothes on the top

Not much of a legacy for 89 years

Drop the bags off tomorrow at the charity shop.