Always Here For You, Too

I began my work shortly after the first organisms somehow appeared

          They did not last long and I was here to take them back

I know not from where I spring but my function is to return life to the void

          I travel everywhere that life goes - all those places but nowhere else

Without any feeling I relieve you of your every understanding

          I am not offended if you should not accept me, even in the end

I make no deals and cast no bargains and steal closer every single moment

          I have neither voice nor mercy and lack any mind to understand you

I am not cruel or happy and I merely see you off to a place where I can never go

          You cannot imagine me, you will not remember me and I do not know you

I am neither harsh nor cruel, but you can make of me what you will

          I attend your murders, suicides, plagues and starvation - all just alike

You need not fear me any more than you feared your long forgotten birth

          Horrid suffering and evil torture are not even what I am about

But, as pain and anguish may arrive before me, many welcome me in my time

          Often it appears that I am early, but there cannot ever be a mistake

I come to join you forever more to wherever it was that you once emerged

          Behold, I come to honor only the living and not for stone or water

Though I offer no form of gospel, none will be ignored, faithful or not

          Many seek to look beyond me but that is none of my concern

I spend moments with all the bugs, the birds and the plants as well as you

          I witness the end of every detail of the life force in all of the universe

Whether you pass away in silken sheets or bleeding out in filth, it matters not

          I take you away from all this, ignorant of the promises of your faiths

I always travel with you, but linger not a moment when you are gone

          You pass empty again into that void from which all life has surged

I am but a form emerging from your imagination of that which is beyond you

          I am that passage which rejoins you once again with the inanimate

I do not revel in your mass slaughters, and each and every one still gets their moment

          Famine, plague and war summon me to many places, all at once

I am universal and have been unavoidable ever since the first living cell

          I have no face, but your imaginations have lent me many images

The very fact that I am always there goads many into fevered actions

          Regardless of the acts or players the final scene must be the same

I know nothing of the hopeless struggle in which you so joyfully partake

          But be sure that I, too, should love life, for without it, neither do I exist

I have spawned the faith which quiets your lonely desperation

          Truth be told, you need no faith to draw strength from my absolute certainty

I mark the entropy which must always counter the organization of the life force

          When I began and my ultimate future are questions I cannot ask        

All your gods demand belief that will ensure your spirit survives your body

          any post-mortem accounting of such faiths do not affect my actions

I am not alive and I have no soul or consciousness but I am only for the living

          They represent me with skulls but these are as simple stones to me

I can know nothing of your actions, history, families or your dearest beliefs

          There is no lingering on my part when once the life has left you

I am a shadow passing at the start of a dreamless sleep from which there is no awakening

          I cannot answer any questions and am unable to foster any illusions

I am here for you, be you rich or poor, ugly or handsome, young or very old

          I will not mock you and I know nothing of so-called good and evil

I walk always in your shadow until that moment in which we are briefly joined

          I promise you nothing except the absolute certainty of our meeting

Some beg for mercy but I have no way of listening or any kind of understanding

          I arrive at the very end of every lifetime and join it for but an instant

I know nothing of saviors, re-incarnation, souls or the great wheel of life

          I do not learn and, for me, time does not exist

I cannot retain any memories, just like you once were and will forever be

          Quantum chance always summons me because nothing is really scripted

Even though you witness me time and again, my mystery always remains

          You understand the biology but the metaphysics will forever remain beyond you