Who do we need a place to grieve
A tombstone, monument with names?
Or tee-shirts, tattoos, names on sleeves
Old pictures in new picture frames
Some like to move old dead away
Cemeteries, later move old bones
Cemeteries car parks, parks for play
Hidden, stored on walls, old tombstones
While some move on, gran's gone away
Graves once a year seclude your tears
Whilst others want the dead to stay
Say angels on shoulders calm fears
Some think souls live and will return
Fly past as short-lived butterflies
(Yet not as bugs in rugs nor worms)
Sweet memories when someone dies
We give them little when they live
Spend our money on us instead
Then spend huge sums on wakes and graves
When it's too late and they are dead
A quick death brings one day of pain
The birth and death dates make a frame
New birthdays, weddings aren't the same
But old pix show joys lived again.
And now money they saved is spent
On building a fine monument
A statue, standing, or reclined
In an upstanding frame of mind.
-ends-
Spike Milligan statue and commentary plaque in park in Finchley, north west London. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.
I changed the last line of the penultimate verse
from
But photos show joys lived again
to
But old pix show joys lived again.
Photos is a much better word than the horrid neologism (recently new word) pix. But I wanted to clarify that it is photos of old weddings, not photos of new weddings, which revive happy memories.
I added the last verse when I came back to add a photo on Saturday May 9th 2026.
Please share links to your favourite poems.
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