The Lonely Mortuary Assistant... And The Dead Cheerleader Poem by Milos Jovanka

Simon lived with cadavers, down beneath the underworld
Scared of life and always shy he played it safe with mummy crowds
His expertise was quite unique in areas of special care
Curator and beautician to patrons passed, and Medium rare

He spent his days refurbishing, upholstering expired meat
Putting on the finishing touches with elegance and fine Finesse
Restoring the pink varnish to the surface of grey friezes
His artistry was legendry by trimming mould off mouldy peaches

Though he was a stylist's professor, an award winning embalmer
There were no laurel wreaths or Nobel Prize for winning friends
His life kept him a troglodyte, desensitized to animation
All his friends were long distance with a phone bill as their testament

An insomniac for romance, he's never been the one
To be the cynosure darling, of a ladies infatuation
His physique was anemic, paper thin and phlegmatic
His attire was antique, looking gothic psychotic

Seven years he was content, with the consciously illiterate
Until one day St Mathews sent him a special present
It was a slab named Annabella who was a varsity contender
Until slipping on her hubris with professional consumption

At first he was euthanized to her cold blue elegance
Golden locks still writhed as beams across the silver table
Her uniform, fresh and prim was azure with vermillion trim
And the face of a frozen angel, now immaculately grim

With force of will, he tried his best to shut his lust
And retreat from this cold nightingale
Though when he touched her porcelain cheek
He fell deep into the sweet abysses dream

And the night before her final tour
He took the time to prepare a feast
With music and some chardonnay
They would spend the time in ambience

She was dressed in mint perfection, in a white evening gown
Prepared by her parents, from a family's vault of hand me down
It was ghost pale satin, with silver strips of lace
That underneath the soft light gave her an air of grace

His palms were chalk, as he took her cold incandescent hand
Which felt like stone beneath the snow in a January thaw
And gently as a gentlemen he took from sterile table
And they began to serenade around the palace mausoleum


It might have been taboo, but it felt completely true
All of her was fiction, an echo that he imagined
Yet in had hands she circumvented the hollowness of death
And gave the dear poor Simon an exhilaration for life

And for a time they danced to the ballet of Swan Lake
Death and life held each other in a fine embrace
They danced in the dark of the light of the lamp
Yet it could have been the sun in another land

And for an hour there was an eternity of love
The clock had stopped, beneath the world from above
He held her close, the girl of stone, and felt the deep impulse
That love is but a shadow, of what it means to have connection


Then dawn came, and time dragged like embers of a cigarette
He put her back the way she was, in the chest of deaths treasure
And as the years rolled on, and his bones began to toll
He remembered that for a second, he had heard the mermaids sing.