Surprise Poem by Morgan Michaels

'Yes', he thought, 'everyone will die',
except 'moi'-
Death the lot of a bourgeois
whose kids insure a 'kinda' immortality'.

So it was with some surprise
that, getting up, one morn
and stumbling to the john
he voided a stream of velvety, red urine,

and, heart racing, imaged the boy
whose closed, dark-fringed eyes
and snowy fingers, clasped in a rosary's
grip, long ago convinced him not to die.

Then, holding despair at bay, dutifully
(though with shaking hands) rang his doctor,
dreading more than cancer any answer
that might compromise a creditable lie.

And, to cut short a tale already too long,
suffered the interventions of a specialist,
who, disappointed, diagnosed a stone.
and promptly dismissed him.

'See', he said, 'I was right! '
Death's for poor, stupid sinners
And slept, that night, unusually tight
and went, the next, as usual, to dinner.