The Last Will and Testament of the Poet... So...this is the poem where I make several outrageous and/or silly, semi-silly or occasionally serious requests regarding the preparations when I die. Something along the lines of: I want to be buried in my favorite yellow raincoat, a blood red carnation tacked to the left breast pocket while standing in a red English telephone booth, in Pere LaChaise or Green River Cemetery. I want music, something bouncy in the note of C, nothing dirge like or sad, except for maybe O...Danny Boyyyy...the pipes are calling. I always liked that song. I want joyous tears and sweet nostalgia not grief wailing as a banshee. I want everyone to get drunk and jump naked into a big flesh pile after you plant me. I want you to eat exotic food Thai or Indian as you have polite, remember that time when we conversations with one another. I want a moving eulogy from one of my dearest friends. In lieu of flowers give money to the homeless, save the whales or a free Tibet. But we both know it won’t happen that way because you are a poet and reality more likely will spin something like: You will not have planned ahead and located a red English telephone booth and it’s not like there is an overabundance of red English telephone booths at the dollar store or the pawn shops downtown and so someone will pick out a plain wooden box for you likely something in knotty pine with yellow tinted varnish because that is what your thin budget will allow. And in the general chaos that follows your death, no one will be able to find your favorite yellow raincoat because it will have fallen down behind the sofa three week’s previous because you never could put things away where they belonged, could you? And everyone will send flowers because they do not know where to get in touch with the homeless or who is saving the whales or freeing Tibet these days. And there will be no music of your choosing because one of your spacey, marginally functional poet friends or relatives forgot the boombox and the CDs and it’s just too far to drive all the way home for the sake of music alone, but another old friend forgot to take his battered trombone from the trunk of his car after last night’s Open Jam at the broken down roadhouse three towns over and so he will play a few ill conceived Beatles and Dylan covers to keep things lively. And a lay minister you knew tangentially, who came to shake your hand after a reading at the local community center will give the benediction because there was no time to find or fly one of your dear friends in from wherever they have meandered to over the years. And there will be wailing and a definitive lack of joyous tears and of course no one will feel like getting naked or jumping into a huge flesh pile because an orgy would just seem somehow...well inappropriate. And people will eat what is always eaten after funerals: catered food in aluminum trays warmed by Sterno pots, cold cuts on outrageously minuscule dinner rolls, tremendous groaning pans of lukewarm ziti with grated Parmesan cheese and Swedish meatballs in thick, lumpy gravy. And Pere La Chaise and Green River are all full up with dead artists already so you will be buried in a lonely, windswept plot on a hillside in rural New York State in a rumpled old suit and pants that date to your misguided early career as a copy editor thirty years previous and the wrinkled shirt beneath has a bad case of ring around the collar and the tie is just too short and tacky for current fashion. And the only consolation in all of this will be that there will be a few sweet nostalgias and knowing the crowd you run with, more than a few will dive well into their cups to mourn your passing which is a better reason than yesterday’s sunrise and someone did manage to locate a blood red carnation at the gas station and pinned it to your lapel. And while we are supposed to cheer the minor victories in our lives, these consolations do not taste at all like victory or indicate a life well lived. But neither should this be taken as an obscene or grand failure on your part, you just never realized that your life was as much a rumpled ill fitting suit, ring around the collar and bad trombone music as it was yellow raincoats, red English telephone booths and bouncy music in the key of C.