Contributor: John Ogden

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Set aside everything for a death
Set aside everything for a change
Set aside life
And lies
And progress
And make the time
To clean up that final
familial
mess
because it's not enough
to have to put your father in the ground
to say those final farewells
to wade through a lifetime of detritus
selecting fragments
for piecing into your own short life
no
no, the faceless paperwork hungers for the dead
the steady-grinding machinery
takes each cut
from every man
demands
not just money
but life
life taken and spent
taken and spent
on the dead.


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John Ogden was conceived of a government form and a passing mailbox. He lives somewhere out in the woods of a rural land more akin to the fantasy realms of literature than real life, and his favorite dirt bikes will always be the broken ones.