Christopher Nagle. writing.com
Context …
Softwell is a life restoration company that rebuilds existential capital and social maintenance infrastructure.
One of its founding fathers has fallen foul of the corporate politics that is taking over and remolding its inspirational and charismatic origins. He is removed in some disgrace, which not only breaks his heart, but his health and will to live. Death takes him, but in so doing reveals all that life never understood. And the new leader will beatify his memory….
‘Death in the Afternoon’ is a poem about ideals, virtue, power, memory, betrayal, death and the fallibility of all things, no matter how well intended and organized.
Life is messy. Succession and change is inevitable. Death resolves all. Read on…
How could it come to this
that even crunching slippers
on gravelled path seemed loud
and full of fury
reminders
of that last and awful meeting
on floor fifty-two?
He needed the escape
through the welcome unshut portal
to his shed of kinder things
the reassuring smells
of garden scents
paint and solvents
the orderly and predictable rows
of tools to make and mend
in the quiet limpid light
of innocent afternoons
that filtered through the panes
of fly flecked cobwebbed windows
peeling paint
as mute remains of better days.
And yet in the shadows
of this tin room
was something so oppressive
in its silence,
so accusing
in its demeanor,
that he fidgeted
and couldn’t concentrate
except upon a looming dread
a dark and chilling draft
whose icy malice churned his heart.
He could feel the blood swelling
and pulsing round his temples
bringing on a migraine.
He tried to massage them
then his nose’s bridge
to relieve the eye strain.
But with eyes closed
there was no darkness
only harsh fluorescent lighting
in the heavy tabled board room
on the floor below his office
where there’s now a meeting
and water there for drinking
to slake the desert dryness
of his mouth now dehydrating
salty silence in the making
and cracking lips a-grinding
on a face that is composing
for a blow.
Read the full poem here, where you will also find the correct formatting …
