The ghosts of Odd Fellows filled the room,
And watched as living poets talked of death.
Dead fathers, dead mothers yet to come.
They in time to be dead daughters and sons.
They stopped for death, lingering in nuances
Of frailty, mourning the dead and themselves.
A death poem was delivered while the March lion
Prowled and roared just outside the door.

Their death odes read they turn to dead poets,
Speaking in awe of genius and untimely demise.
Crumbs of cookies coat their living souls, 
Deadening the surface where words might etch
Some timeless message bound inside the 
Profit product that betrays the poet's soul.

In the distant night, the arm of an oak
Crashed to the ground, nature hailed the gain.
A feeble voice mimicked the dead poet's soul,
As the wind slammed against the Odd Fellows temple,
Crying, "I am more the voice of dead poets
Of too much drink and pain."

The Odd Fellows and I would have preferred scotch
To the cookies from the shopping store shelf.
These dead poets mixed liquor and pain,
Practicing poetic alchemy, harkening death.
I thought to ask the poet of time to bare
Her soul and breasts to quench my thirst.
But that would have been too honest a thought
For the living that tell lies about the dead.