No matter death stalks so close...

among the cornucopia of living beings
(in my unprovable opinion
only because said stealer of qi
flourishes all around and within us
from our first to last breath),
and particularly self evident
when violent homicidal
and/or suicidal crime portrays
barely recognizable corpse
as horrible and gross,
or even if natural old age id est
courtesy senescence understood
as the logical precursor
we human beings as rational creatures,
nevertheless experience shock
and emotional trauma,
when natural chronological order
precedes from birth, maturity, and old age
when family or friend
the one who exits stage door left
predictably entail cessation,
when loved one gives up the ghost
yet tis natural to mourn

where Swiss-American psychiatrist
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
introduced the famous
five stages of grief—

denial, anger, bargaining,
depression, and acceptance—
in her seminal 1969 book,
On Death and Dying
our singular solo journey for body electric

bereft of the soul
to segue way into unknowable

and rumored to be a hellish final frontier,
not only embraced as ordinary order
from seminal instant to descent into grave

or cremains scattered

across a favorite place of special meaning,
but also cited in some cultures as occasion
for celebration and remembrance
of dearly departed,
(and well nigh expected)
for kith and kin human reactions
incorporating tears of sorrow,
and divergent moments
when the fêted individual brought laughter
obviously emotions flip-flopping
regarding recently deceased
to beget lachrymose reaction.

One cannot differentiate nor readily identify

how many countless hashtags
employed as antithetical antonym of life

doth guise and dolls itself
proffering Elysian Fields

for dearly departed to repose

until the end of time

impossible mission for the likes
of this specimen of

whether self identity of
outside that once conveniently adopted
black and white female or male categorization
now social scientists and lay people alike
becoming more aware sexual categories
constitute gamut wherein the term "genderfluid"
among plethora of what came
to be coined "Alphabet people"
a colloquial, sometimes derisive term
used to refer to the LGBTQIA+ community,
highlighting the growing number
of letters used to describe
various sexual orientations
and gender identities
emerged in the 1990s

within trans and queer communities,

with one of the earliest recorded mentions

appearing in Kate Bornstein's 1994 book

Gender Outlaw: On Men,

Women and the Rest of Us
and gained further traction
in the mid-1990s
through activists like Riki Wilchins
and appeared in online,
private communities during that time.

Many objections and hackles raised
(as a liberal sexagenarian
heterosexual married Democrat, I try to avoid
being biased, close-minded, prejudiced, et cetera)
where multitudinous offshoots

of gender differentiation now offer a slot
which Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)
must be given free reign to thrive
aims to foster diverse workplaces and communities
by ensuring equitable opportunities
and an inclusive culture
though we simians all fall under
the more general name bipedal hominids
species and genus Homo sapiens
(but according to G3 is Key of All Poetry -
he corrected me as commented
We are technically homo sapien, sapiens).

Despite vast chasms of different mindsets
to maintain tolerance would be incumbent
upon the "Better angels" refers to,
often invoked as
the "better angels of our nature"
to urge people to rise above
conflict, hatred, or selfish impulses
and represents our best selves—
kindness, unity, and moral conscience—
rather than our worst tendencies or "demons"
not only fosters divisiveness, hatred,

but the bandit stealing souls to the netherlands
malevolent beastie boy
feasting on the fancy delicacy of ordinary folks
ought to remind each of us
how tempus fugit
within which so much execrable bickering
maketh the name of the game
triggers killing fields
that the Grinch of sacrificed
once prime humans real estate
fuels a constant state
guardedness of defense
that General Electric
the company my daddy worked
unable to keep abreast for munitions
to tame the unquenchable thirst for blood
that the nasty and brutally short tempered
hair-trigger ready denizen
adrip with the devil may care
about dirty deeds done dirty cheap
oblivious to the high red alert regarding
when and where the grim reaper
(may be poised to strike),
the most common synonym
for the personification of death
or simply the Reaper,
typically depicted as a cloaked skeleton
wielding a scythe to harvest souls,
but other common synonyms
include the Angel of Death,
Pale Death, the Destroyer, and Azrael,
yet since the dawn of civilization
a plethora of anthropomorphized figures
embedded themselves
within the paradigms of cultures.