Are You Planning A Funeral? Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Are you Planning a Funeral?
Are you planning a funeral?
What will the mourners eat
At the wake, at the breaking of bread?

Are you planning a funeral?
Where will the dead one lie
On show like a precious exhibit?

Are you planning a funeral?
Will you have roses and orchids
Cash in a box for Heroes
For Cancer, Stroke, or Pox?

Are you planning a funeral?
Forget the fashionistas
Send instead for the shaman, the priest for pity's sake
With the words to address the unthinkable
Let there be tears or laughter
Memories shared or hidden at the wake

Are you planning a funeral?
Not one pence of the money spent
Will raise the deceased like Lazarus up from the tomb

Oh hard, so much the harder to bear
If the body there in the coffin's the fruit of your womb