The Brothers Death Poem by Clive Culverhouse

A brotherly jaunt through sinister mirth
behold the brothers Death:

gowned and guided, an ill century
the fourteenth, an alliance of crop, of plague
in ground-down death of torrential pains
in sores and blood under the rains
that drowned the land, starved the bellies
there echoed howls of ill exclaim
a wanting of a light to shine
is where the brothers thought that they
worked well together, effectively

one would scoop from ruined crop
one from sickness, war, attack
the beak, a sign, of the plague mask
in shacks, where hags mopped weeping rot
crosses on doors, on floors of straw
with nothing in the cooking pot
the brothers danced and sang their wealth
of many clientele they sought

and on they went, and on they struck
perfecting songs on appetites
of pestilence and of disease
hand in hand like trees whose leaves
do smother, smite, in murderous breeze
the brothers, down the ages tease
and beckon, wreaking havoc on,
like rolling waves of seas on high
always taunting their sister - life


Clive Culverhouse
First written in 2018, rewritten in 2020