Banished from the medical community
One brilliant German forensic pathologist
Johann Casper, his nascent methods on
The rate of rot made him a cunning medico-criminalist
The heady chemical stench of decay set him free
To discover putrefaction patterns others failed to see
Internal and external bacteria coalesced
And illustrated their wisdom in a semi-liquid mess
Professor of Forensic Pathology
Disgraced by Berlin doctors
Misunderstood forensic genius
Nineteenth century medicine
Rejected forensics and outlawed him
Amonst reeking gassy corpses
Casper hatched his dark science
Medical examiners now unite
Bring Casper's Dictum to scientific light
Casper's Dictum:
"A week in air-two weeks in water
Two weeks in water-eight weeks in ground!"
Ballooning stiffs and liquescent corpses
Bursting models for Casper's Dictum
Streptococci and Clostridium Welchii
Battle for post mortem bacterial supremacy
Autolytic conversion hosts and breeds
While putrefactive ooze squirts from the seams
Casper draped in a rotten viscera
Popping bleb and bullae sebum
Navigating the semi-fluid black mess
Charting decay for his seminal dictum
He noticed that corpses found submerged
Decay half as fast as those uninterred
Exhumed carcasses revealed to him
Four times less rot than those in the swim
He penned a text in 1850
Called Forensic Dissection (naturally)
His dictum was touted a medicolegal success
Even Rudolf Virchow was begrudgingly impressed
Casper's Dictum:
"A week in air-two weeks in water
Two weeks in water-eight weeks in ground!"
Ballooning stiffs and liquescent corpses
Bursting models for Casper's Dictum
Sulphemethaemoglobin stains, putridity marbles
Blood is haemolysed
The unyielding hot logic of decay persists
Casper is immortalized
Before predation can strip the corpse clean
Casper graces the grisly crime scene
From waterlogged stiffs soughing their flesh
To exhumed partially skeletonized mulch
His ghastly rule of thumb is well known
From recently deceased to sun-bleached bone
Forensics and anatomy are hideously wed
Casper's science of the dead

Repulsive slab of pasty meat
Torqued wide with craftsman's pride
Revealing a slick tub of grume
I slide my arms deftly inside
This husk once sentient
Now on the cusp of pestilence
In science's name I rent
A grisly educational end
Finding and excising anatomy
Mustering my knowledge of postmortem history
Instructed and guided by
The infamous anatomist-Giovanni Morgagni
I find the liver lobed
In cirrhotic hold
I scrape arterial plaque
Flay pericardial sacs
Disease invariably ends with me
I cave it from the corpse for further study
Human shelf life proved once again
The tax of living corrupts unerringly
Necrolytic bubbling, chymic innards splash
Soupy rot sprays from gastic mush
Piping putrefaction makes gruel of its host
Fogged moisture beads my dripping face guard
Grotesque anatomy
Students of disease
Organic debris
Lessons from Morgagni
Opened stiffs
Olidious whiffs
Putrefaction pours
Spilling gore
Hunting down diseases, divining macabre truth
Sickened innards coo, squirting enzymic clues
Tracking pathogenic progress to its end
Retching from the answers found therin
Organs are sorted, labeled, and weighed
Adroitly butchering carcasses, for which I'm well paid
To anatomic manuals, I steadfastly abide
It's the only method to navigate while inside
The amazing human machine
Inside out is rarely seen
I've patiently toiled and trained
To make it my stock and trade

Disgusting apologues teach grisly parables
Didactic explorations of putrefying stiffs
Decay: a fact of nature most allegorical
The fetid realizations quickly make me sick
Pathology turned philosophy
Seminar and necropsy
Stippled flesh fouled with soot spell a gruesome clue
Spatter patterns ink confessions sanguinely penned
Pieces found in garbage sacs point to sober truths:
Life is terminal and contritely spent
Bloated sage on my table
Spins a rancid, age-old fable
Slime and rot
Pock and clot
Corpse gives in
To pathogens
Hack the mess
Quite distressed
The face below
Is my own
Pathology-warding litany
Autopsy-tragic finale
(Solo: perennial discourse in petrefaction)
The splattered carcass stagnates
It seeps slick purge onto the floor
It heralds our own fates
Destinies described in gore
Abraded rope compression marks underline the fact
Mangled corpses offer postmortem viewpoints
Ragged stab wounds carve futile warnings
Jutting knife hilts like dripping exclamation points
Vomitous epiphany
Emeritus, so reeking
Bilious slag
Blood-soaked slab
Wasting host
Hot compost
To my chagrin
Gross Doctrines
Consume my thoughts
Amidst the rot
Pathology-warding litany
Autopsy-tragic finale

The aftermath of blunt force trauma crumpled in the morgue
Crushed decedents pupled to rags, skin-wrapped splintered bones
Splaying limbs bruised and rent, finding countless dents
Reenacting comic flights, the graceless cause of death
Pureed entrails porridge
Organs jumbled raw
New tenant in cold storage
Brains pitched liquescent
Teeth ground in maw
Whole carcass quite putrescent
Bodies struck by vehicles, impact sending flight
Whiplash limbs twist midair, spinning from the plight
Subjects fallen from great heights, hemorrhage on the ground
Long bones jutting through torn skin, leaking pasty mound
Blunt force trauma injury pulverizes subjects instantly
Postmortem X-ray imagery tells the grisly tale
Dislocating joint from bone, the corpse makes crepitating moans
I dissect but quickly sew, completely overwhelmed
Frame cracks and rifts
Decedent lifts
Pirouette through the air
As tendons tear
Tubs of sickly yellow fat spilled from dermal splits
Carcass weighing ten less pounds from missing crime scene bits
Scalp and skin dislodged and sloughing, draped in wrinled pules
The wealth of trauma adds new pages to my growing file
Slackened jaw unpinned
Hinges open wide
Forms a ghastly grin
Eyes protruding pink
Looking quite surprised
They deflate and sink
Puzzles reassembled
Not one truly resembles
Humanity at all
(The stuff is an utter waste
A shambles of a closed-casket case)
Final flight recorded on the gragile human body
A trip so terminal as to be without ignominy
Evidence presented in crushed bits of scrap
Flailing jellied form, a boneless pummeled sack
Skein of tangled viscera wind fractured discs of vertebra
Life-succinet ephemera: It's snugged uncermoniously
Road debris embedded in the chalky, scraped riven skin
Innards now revolt within and rupture sloshing froth
Frame cracks and rifts
Decedent lifts
Pirouette through the air
As tendons tear

Virchows method is the heart of prosector life
Pen-gripped scalpels and palm-gripped section knives
19th century dissection methods still relevant today
Systematic journeys of corpses rudely flayed
Pathological anatomy married with forensics
Notating viscera in situ: a concept then eccentric
Opening carcasses in a highly ordered Virchow
Guide my hand
Removing jellied organs from crumbling husks of waste
Putrefaction inspires haste as tissues whisk to paste
Following the method that Virchow gave to us
Before the dead is laid to rest, we mire through the sickening pus
Tearing open carcasses, a frenzied labored job
I weigh the heart then section liver
It comes away with repugnant wet pop
(Solo: heroic tripe dimidiation and disassembly)
Dissecting entire organ systems at once
A chain of glistening innards to expertly trounce
Thoracic chamber-a cave of bony hazards
Abdominal system-decrepit, stinking cupboard
Tearing my gloves on ragged costal arches
I manhandle the kidneys and they split with tiny notches
I drop my bread knife in the gassy, reeking cess
Suction from the petrefaction yanks my glove into the mess
Split the trunk
Right down its length
Rudolph Virchow
Give me strength
Revolting belching stiffs reduced to collapsed slab
Disassembled, emptied out, and stuffed in biohazard bags
Rudolph Virchow
Lives in these halls
The morgue, his home
His disciples-all
We carve and hack
Seeking death
We steadfast priests
Of The Last Breath
Done my time
In ME school
The chow's a joke
The work is crual
My tade is sick
But I'm compelled
Rudolph Virchow
Taught me well

Roughly eviscerating the festering carcass
Blood-mprints of innards splashed on my bib
While ripping organs from their inanimate host
I puncture my hand on a broken rib
Bone splinters gouge-spurt blood everywhere
Corpse wounds prosector-I seek medical care
Forensic evidence compromised-cruor and blood wed
Hazards of necropsy-Commingling with the dead
(Solo: disastrous cadaveric misadventure)
The fenzied tempo of the dissection increases
I deign to sustain nicks, cuts, and scrapes
Two hours per autopsy, three procedures a day
My workload demands such a breakneck pace
Latex rubber gloves-a false security
Contamination stings-the kiss of virulency
Maggot-riddled carcass-den of putrefaction
Bisected rancid corpse-tub of hopping infection

The fetid menage of wafting flatus
Singe my palate with nauseating rot
This stale concotion of postmortem brew
Inundate nasal passages with snot
Grotesque reaction
Huff the carcass
Odiferous putrefaction
Aurborne bacteria lodge in my sinuses
Tickle the back of my throat with decay
Violently retching, coughing up phlegm
Laced with acrid cadaveric waste
Reddened eyes sore from maturating odor
Repugnant air currents of flavor so vile
The sour fetor assualts my taste buds
I regurgitate vitriolic bile
Dank perfume
Necrotic gas
Reeking plumes
Medical examiners scramble for air
Menthol cream mustaches stave off the stench
Gusts of mephitis breach ventilation hoods
The musty rank tang makes my stomach lurch
Sniff the stiff
Effusing mold
Corrosive whiff
The fog of dissection
Post mortem haze
Tear-inducing gas
Leave me in a daze
(Solo: snorting necrotic funk, high on the choking musk)
A retching chorus scores the morgue
Carcass is swollen with bactericidal activity
Eructing its final funeral dirge
Sputtering the crescendo of its redolent symphony
Sickening zephyrs
Bouquet of stink
Pungent resins
Weeping meat expels a foul fragrance
Baptizing us in a spicy caress
The cadaver belly, distended and bloated
Collapses into a burping, bubbling mess
Carrion vapor seeps from necrotic tissue
Effervescing with puddles of cocktailed juice
It eddies and swirls, chirns and foams
Before scaping down the drainage sluice
Noxious chemical hazard
Reeking human offal
Miasma so rancid and caustic
Virulent murk most awful
Stagnant decedent a jellied clump
Organic refuse heap host to rot
Pathological rebellion of bacteria
Vitiates the viscera refusing to stop

Autolysis blanches tissues kaleidoscopic hues
Healthy pinks, in death, rot to blacks and decayed blues
Putrefaction bruises the innards as they slough
A cadaveric soup bowl filled with semi-liquid crust
Foul pyarthrosis
Shallow bloody pool
Bubbling gassy bog
Shredded organ gruel
Festering organs
Cellular mush
Colors so revolting
Reeking rainbows that gush
Vascular tendrils whip decomp-aerosol
Purple clouds of gore mist my mask
Autodigestion swirls the organ mud-broth
Rivers of tincture in which I splash
Rank viscera bursting with colors
Splashing a palate for obscene week-old stink
Malacia mixes, new colors are born
They dilute when I spray them down the sink
Malacia mires
Blossoms of gore
Rotting hues
Paint the morgue
Death paints a picture
On cadaveric canvas
Spoiling organic matter
Paint a life so tenebrous
(Solo: Abstract Expressionaism with liquescent organ dye)
Organs degrade to chunky necrotic paste
Blues, reds, and blacks mix to murky, runny grays
Kaleidoscopic hues bruise the viscera I take
It's shocking to witness all the colors they make
Hot, frothy tissue
Bioplasm unglued
Whimsically colored
Patho-grime pools
Corroded innards loose cohesion
Necrotic gastrointestinal wreck
Putrefied ecorche is leaking
Impressionist gallery so grotesque
Cadaveric walls whisk colorless
Bacteria stain the slop as they breed
Soft tissue melts with autodigestion
The carcass in final entropy
Cellular scramble
Fetid organ pap
Obnoxious pulp
Pastel-necrotic scrap
Death paints a picture
On cadaveric canvas
Spoiling organic matter
Paint a life so tenebrous