Jake Sheff
The Three Stages of Death

I.

Poetry is an ironic “fuck you,” there is no substitute
For math, and nothing like the shepherd on his sphere more adversarial
Than saying “spheres are shepherding themselves.” Telekinesis
Shortens “devastation” into “diva,” and skeptics
Pledge their heinous trot of days to miles of snow on miles of ash, an option
Plants divide amongst themselves to no effect.

So this first stage of death is an illusion:
A myth, and nothing like a sphere or shepherd; a substitute
For devious. And Darwin, like the Omaha Beach of options,
Shortens this fine night into a finite adversarial
Fledgling stung by the day’s detachments. Skeptics
Plant divisions in themselves; that’s all it is.

(II.) * See editor’s note

Lament for the dead zone, its telekinetic
Battles spilling numbers more unreal than our illustrious
Slaying spheres at Appomattox, shepherding the skeptics’
Shattered devastation into dive bars and diving substitutes
For bells, the only bellicose, non-adversarial
Abyss, the corners of your name, like carrot cake, that’s all it is.

Complaint of the dead zone: The icy job of optimistic
Negligence is anarchic by nature, dyskinetically
Employed by shepherds in Atlantis, adversely
Spearing sheep instead of shearing, so confronting the elusive
“Gore me” from the anchovy – true gourmet or bread pudding
Abscessed – consider slicing up your name and asking, “What is there?”

* The second stage is taboo, so we can only speak of it in metaphor, life-affirming willful misdirection

III.

“What if someone’s pride comes, and they don’t fall?” “They will.” Skeptics
Put this on their tombstones, and that is tertiary death in dialogue opinion.
Adages too spherical have subtitled
Short varieties championed by tectonic plates
Of ought, and there are eight of those. Illusions
Plant ideas of unity, like “horny Thor turned two Jakes into a spider,”

And that is getting closer to the fall than any maxim adversary.
“Your body is a contest of brambles, insectivores and veins...” Antiseptics
Or a proverb won’t come close to what I’m getting at: Illicit
Lengthening; redrawing all the warden’s options
Serpentine and spherical, and by extrasensory perception:
Instead of a head, two noodles and a meatball,

Or a thorny crown to realize substitution advertises
Death’s third stage: Catalina’s breeze in optic
Pioneers and archives full of nothing; that’s all it is.