LOST IN THE STYX

When my life was over, and the judge declared me legally dead, my wife made arrangements as best she could. Two gold Drachmas were placed on my eyes so the ferryman would carry my corpse to Tartatus. However I spent most of that on thermals, boots, a bowl and coffee cup. Without enough for Charon, I've been set adrift.

The ruler of this underworld is known by the names, Hades and Pluto.

A less known name for him is Dis.

That's because there is No respect in death.

No one here can impact the world of the living the way we wish.

Trying desperately to have someone act on our behalf.

Only with great concentration, that is many of us, can we move small objects in the real world. It takes the majority of us working together to get a Bill to the State Capital.

My soul, like a familiar spirit, seeks the old haunts that my memories are constructed of. While time has stopped for me, my family and friends still move at the speed of life. In what passes for my mind, places and faces stay the same as the last time I saw them sixteen years ago.

There are times when a Securus séance let's them hear my disembodied voice.

The Medium tells me they are moving on with a timed countdown.

"You have one minute left".

Ouija board messages written on a screen by hands I can no longer hold ask,

" Spirit, are you there?"

Openings in the veil between this Sheol existence and there world is like our mail or electronic stamps, not tangible.

One more thing I can't touch, feel or hold.

This comes with a tablet I can't swallow.

Character counts limit communication, because of my limited character.

I once received fleeting glances as they pass me by, prophetic visions like photographs to keep in an album, that too has been taken away.

Food for daemons disguised as cockroaches, who eat the glue that binds them in my book of the dead.

Snapshots of a deceased past, with no hope of revival.

All of this, tortured reminders of what has left me in this grave.

Sold down the river by my own greedy, guilty soul.

My sense of loss is Big and Muddy, I M.I.S.S.I.S.S. I miss them so much.

Any hope of drifting into the same gulf is DA Nile.

Raised in the woods on the twisting , turning Kissimmee river, I thought I had a good sense of direction.

But this current, carries me away from the past.

The only time that has any value for me.

As it flows away from all that is living, it's easy to get lost in the Styx.