Resurrection Mishaps

Someone has died and it’s seemingly
impossible to resurrect him. See, he’s
sitting in a meditative lotus position in
the chickenshit muck, probably humming like
mysteriously before copping it, humming
through duct tape strapped over his mouth, flies
buzzing around his head, the hummus stench of
the chicken coop in his nostrils. Nostrils
that couldn’t ventilate themselves because of
the duct tape blocking off circulation.
The coop’s hot corrugated tin roof
buckles in the heat above ours heads – and if
to know you were going to die wasn’t
bad enough, you also had to turn into
a hemp cocoon in the process, from the
press of chicken feathers around you, chicken
breath, chicken shit and the sauna griffness of
this truly makeshift-looking dwelling…
Poor bastard was trying to meditate and
resurrect himself in advance, knowing he’d
die and shuddering for an instant – at the
thought of what he’d look like when discovered:
you know how butterflies fold themselves up
in cocoons, you know they’ve been practicing this
for centuries, and you know on
the outside they wouldn’t divulge this
meditative posture, knowing how silly
a mysteriously contemplative cocoon must
look. This was just part of the great
embarrassment, probably, for the corpse-to-be,
and out of human compassion you try to resurrect
him. But a miracle excludes all collapse of life,
and trying to bring this sucker back to life
is a collapse of the miracle itself. If not the whole
goddamn chicken coop. He looks like my great
aunt’s head when she had slathered dye on it.
And smells that way too.