melissaahowells - What Could a Death Meet-Up Have To Offer?

There's a group online
which meets bi-weekly
they discuss death
in a friendly, open atmosphere
totally non-judgmental
open to all
black attire not required

snacks provided
lots of beer specials
Kleenex not provided

I linger there
at this meet-up listing
and consider
showing up as
The Grim Reaper with sickle in hand

then
I recall a Death and Dying class in college
where I asked a classmate for cigarettes
to put in my ears and nostrils
I remembered I silky sunset-red underwear
in my backpack

after installing the cigarettes
into their places
wearing the underwear on my head
my friend and I cut up
we were immediately expelled for the day
from the lecture hall

my friend wore a hat like Michael Nesmith's
on his bald head with intermittent hair sprouting in
which was standard dress for him
and was not yet trendy like it is today

I too was recently relieved
as I'd been mis-diagnosed with Leukemia--
my results, however, had been mixed up with someone else's

on the down side of the teeter-totter,
I'd just learned a long-distance boyfriend
had told me that he was trading up to a rich sugar Mamma
while my parents' twenty year marriage crashed and burned
into a fracturous nasty divorce

the cigarettes and underwear had provided
much needed comic relief
levity, it seemed to me,
was the death therapy maybe
we needed the most

so, I am feline-curious now
what MORE could this
Death Meet-Up
have to offer?

LEGAL COPYRIGHT FOR THIS POEM 1:13PM PST AUGUST 14 2019
AND ALSO FOR THIS WRITER MELISSA A. HOWELLS AND ALSO FOR THIS
LEGALLY COPYRIGHTED SITE TITLE MELOO STRAIGHT FROM HER TILT-A-WORLD

THE NAMES OF THE PARTICIPANTS HAVE BEEN WITHHELD TO PROTECT THE GUILTY...HA-HA