Swimming In Flames

Swimming In Flames

‘Til Death We’re Apart (3 of 3)

Proper burial

Back into the Earth.

We put ourselves in our own boxes – Sub-turf.

The Funeral Business,

Caskets and Baskets.

Flowers and Haunting,

Stares and Prayers.

Caked with Make-Up, Dressed in Sunday’s Best

How you gonna look for your Eternal Rest?

Egyptians in their pyramids with jewels and decorations.

Monks in lotus chimneys, mummified by preservations.

Mummifying bodies, preserving the physical,

Freeing the mental – Sub-continental.

Under the ground

Onto the next round

When you’re inside the fire, where is the sound?

Outline from stencil, dead on the ground

Preserving the coach or

Rotting the rental

∇

They know something that we have forgotten

They Kinged themselves and we’re going rotten

Pardon Me while I burst,

Out of the backdoor of this hearse

The flames feel so warm that I want to go inside

I’m realizing now that’s so beyond just a way to die

The guy sitting cross-legged, surrounded by fire

We see the ashes while he’s floating higher

A transportation portal, like only in cartoons

There are some wild ideas floating in my thought balloons

Agni transforms and these dudes really know the elements

We witness the demonstration and miss the whole elephant

We hand over our passing rights to the number one industry

With all due respect, what makes you think you know what to do with me?

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Death is bizarre enough as it is, but do you ever consider all the rituals that surround it, or lack thereof?

Where “I’m from”, most people do the wake service, funeral, burial, sometimes there will be a church service… Pretty basic compared to the Egyptians and monks I mentioned in the poem.

I started thinking the other day, what if there’s way more to the burial process? The Egyptians make me think that their pyramids were some kind of portal. And I wonder why the monks would be concerned with preserving their bodies? Was it just out of respect or practicality, or is the body translated into their next life somehow? – Making it necessary to keep the body in good shape. Would they be saving it for the possibility of traveling back and forth?

I was at a bonfire last week. It was a little chilly outside and I felt like it would be so nice to actually be in the fire. That got me thinking about the people who light themselves on fire – in protest, or for whatever reason (another area I can research or will take input on). I started having these really interesting thoughts about transmutation, transformation, and what’s really happening in those flames. It was absolutely fascinating to imagine those individuals translating their souls into another realm – so much more than just dying in this physical world.

I wonder why people in my culture dropped all connection with the afterlife – other than ghosts and hauntings – which are usually doubted, downplayed, and misunderstood as it is. Maybe that’s why we have hauntings? – Because the spirits are upset once they’re past this life? I wonder what sort of hauntings they had in ancient Egypt or other cultures/times that handled death and afterlife differently.

I will be doing more research on all of this, but tell me what you guys think 😉