Insurmountable

Group of the Dead, Jacopo Pontormo

The Department of Forgiveness
is closed again

yet the dead clamor
for attention

and threaten
to become a mob

if enough of them
could lift their disgusting

bones from the earth
or whatever

curtain they’re
hidden behind

to play their discordant
symphony of demands.

It is a situation
I’d call tricky,

the odds
of anyone surviving

heavily against
given the number

of the dead
and what they want

despite
being ugly.