My great favorite recitation is the following (given in a "cowboy twang, no surprise):

REINCARNATION

"What is reincarnation?" the Cowpoke asked his friend.
His pal replied, "It happens when your life has reached its end.
They comb your hair and wash your neck and clean your fingernails
And lay you in a padded box away from life's travails,
And the box then goes in a hole that's been dug in the ground,
And reincarnation starts in when you're planted 'neath the mound.
Then clods melt down, just like the box, and you who is inside
And then you're just beginning on your transformation ride.
Meanwhile the grass will grow upon your rendered mound
And soon upon your lonely grave a single flower is found;
And then a horse will wander by and graze upon the flower
That once was you and now become your vegetative bower.
The posy that the horse done eat along with his other feed
Makes bone and fat and muscle essential to the steed
But some is left that he can't use and so it passes through
And finally lays upon the ground, this thing that once was you.
And say by chance I wanders by, and sees this on the ground,
And I ponders and wonders at this object that I've found;
And I thinks of reincarnation and life and death and such
And I come away concluding ... 'Joe, you ain't changed all that much.'"

Dave Oesterreich

Excess line breaks removed. --JoeClone, 26-Feb-03.