Oh don't give me that look;
when girls don't call, I'm forced to go
where the fishin' is easy.
I hope he's got a sharp black ride,
silver hub caps and cuff links.
Open the door for me, Spike
cos I'm not the kind of lady who rides in the back
like your other dates do.
You see, I had this dream
that I was walking down the fourth floor hallway
of a fine old hotel.
My hair was red and thick like it used to be,
and the door to four seventeen
opened easy for me.
April is the cruelest month, so the man said.
One day I found myself alive, and one day I'll find myself dead.
I hope it doesn't rain, but if it does,
then maybe I'll slide out of this life easy,
talking shit right up to that lonesome bell.
I've got a date with the Reaper.
Just like I knew I wouldn't stay married,
I have always known I wouldn't milk it in the nursing home,
planted in front of game shows in the day room
not knowing my own name.
So open the hearse door for me.
Be a gentleman, but if you want to cop a feel as I get in,
why, do what you have to do, Buck.
Where I'm going, I won't be needing the wrappings anyway--
I'll shine just like a new poem
where the words are right and everybody leans in.
April seventeenth I'm gonna die.
So said my dream and the Reaper says "true dat".
I'll slip right through that fourth floor door,
like magic, like anything,
like a good lookin' red-haired rabbit
Coming up smiling from an old top hat.
_______
you make me laugh - and amaze me. :)
ReplyDeletei first read the title as 'a date with a rapper' so glad to see the description of the reaper wasn't too far off.
Oh, don't tell me that! This gives me the creeps.
ReplyDeleteHey, we're all gonna die--I kinda am glad not to know exactly when, though--and if ya gotta go, you might as well go out dancing, I say. I love your red-haired self-waif, giving the reaper her sass, and not from the damn back seat, either. Selfishly hoping it is April 17th of one if the years after I go.
ReplyDeleteThis is such a cool, Shay-style rendition of Dickinson's I could not stop for death (so he kindly stopped for me..)
ReplyDeleteI see no future in dreams, only the subconscious trying to deal with a few issues hanging around in the cerebrum. No one has time to stop for death, but I'm with you on the not hanging out in some old age home waiting for the call.
The Emmylou Harris dream is a more pleasant one to contemplate...
ReplyDeleteOMG it cannot be so. If I cant read you every day I will wind up watching television and that does not bode well. We will all breathe a sigh of relief once that date has passed. Mind you, my SON dreams that he has already died and is talking to me from the astral plane, so let's not get TOO worried, as he is still very much alive.
ReplyDeleteYou wrote this so well it scared me.