"Heading for the Underworld" by Reed Venrick

In the days of the old kingdoms

along the Nile, the custom

was when a king or queen died,

he or she would not depart lonely,

Servants, bodyguards, relatives, eunuchs,

even whole harems were buried

in the soft sands along to serve the big

cheese Pharaohs in mausoleums

or have them sail along in boats to catch

the flow of the underworld,

so it seems little has changed in 2015

in some crazed minds, grasping loaded guns

bought at corner pawns, blasting bullets at nightclubs,

concerts, classrooms, airports killing at pointed random,

refusing to go to the afterlife alone, demanding

the old power of kings and queens--nay,

in their final earth-strewn moments, they want

the power of vengeful gods to destroy,

for a mass killer demands that his might

makes the last rite, and those accidental

souls crossing his random path accompany

him along his river of transience, where

the flowing blood will be surely mixed, until

lying and dying from a policeman's bullet,

he prays to his alienated self, begging

for a quiet voyage to a peaceful planet,

where no demons with firearms roam.