I used to hang out with a coroner

And no matter where we went,

If he were summoned,

We would go forth like two ghouls

To pronounce someone

sufficiently dead.

Sometimes their faces were freshly painted,

Bodies already sucked dry

By some prepaid funeral plan.

Intact and civilized:

They were as tidy as pot plants.

But once we were called out from a dinner

When this time I saw one of them as real.

It lay on its back submerged

Near a late-ploughed field.

It had a long cloth coat

And pink sponge hair rollers

Clinging to its skull.

For this decomposed scene we had laid down our forks:

So he could give the nod to some puscle-gutted sheriff,

Sign an idiotic understatement,

Which allowed the separation of sediment from human,

Gave skulls permission to be skulls.