Body Count

Blood smeared the walls

Splashed the tile

And saturated the clothes

Of the dead man

With his throat slit

Like a gleaming second mouth.

The sharp coppery smell

Of his blood

Filled my head

And I tried to breathe

Through my hanky.

Last week a dead man

Slumped over the wheel of his Buick

Parked in his garage.

A small crimson hole

Appeared in his right temple

But the exit wound on his left

Was the size of a plum.

Death is a rude visitor

Appearing at his pleasure.

There is no preparation possible

When his shadow darkens

A door sill.

I remember teenagers

Suspended from garage rafters

Bodies burst along railroad tracks

Each piece no larger than a basketball.

I was the first there

To comfort a screaming woman

Whose husband sat

Impaled on the shaft of an old Chevy’s

Steering column.

I tried fruitlessly to comfort

A father

Whose wife poisoned

Their four children

When a man in a Hawaiian shirt

Screamed in the parlor’s large room

That he wanted to see the children’s bodies.

My hand was on the father’s shoulder

As he melted into the carpet.

I’ve knocked on doors at midnight

To tell families

A husband, a wife

A child

Mother or father

Was never coming home.

Then, I awoke one morning

Knowing

It was over.

I could do no more.

I dry cleaned my uniform

And hung it in my closet

Still in its plastic shroud.

But I close my eyes to sleep

And count bodies

The way others count sheep.