THE GREAT EQUALIZER

THE GREAT EQUALIZER

Telephone's ringing, it's best not to answer,
Could be heart disease or some form of cancer.
Mesothelioma or black lung if you're a miner,
Or the crafty eyes with the slow demise
Of Parkinson's or Alzheimer's.

Soon you'll be reduced to bones or cemetery ash,
Food for the worms, liquidation of cash,
When the life insurance check comes through,
Death, the great equalizer, has cooked you in his stew.

Buzzer's ringing on the stove, death piping hot from the oven.
Set loose the witches from their wicked little coven.
Spread the tablecloths for the friends and relations,
Fly the flags to herald the new initiation.
Bring the corpse in in his custom built casket,
His snazzy little urn, a glorified basket.
Give him a paragraph in the local news,
Hire a band of minstrels to play a little blues.
Hide his odd eccentric ways, his youthful indiscreet forays.
Fly banners from the front steps to applaud his very life,
Do your best to comfort his children and his wife.

Married, single, divorced or widowed,
Black, white, yellow, red,
Will not stop its black benediction
From descending on your head.

Soon your life will be reduced to a few lines of homespun epitaph,
A memory in a loved one's heart, a picture in a photograph,
Perhaps enshrined in a favorite song or passage in a book,
Whether you were a teacher, a fireman or a crook.
It may be hard to summarize or to encapsulate,
It may be tomorrow or some far off distant date.
It's ashes to ashes with a duel for your soul,
Whether God or the devil, with one you will go.

Soon we'll all be fertilizer, for death is the great equalizer.
And whether you're Catholic, atheist, Protestant or Jew.
Death is not fickle, just a tall dark stranger with cloak and sickle.
Someday it comes calling from out of the blue.
Just like a hurricane or spit in your eye,
Bang, bang, we loved you, we're sorry, goodbye.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2013
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Note: Built around a poem I wrote in college near the time of my father's death in 1983. Back then I called the poem simply "Death". But its theme was death's universality, and back then I was totally healthy, with Parkinson's not even a blip on my radar screen. So I added some verses and changed the name to "The Great Equalizer".