The Everlasting Night

So soon now I lay me down to sleep forever

Never again to wake up together

An eternal night is how it will seem

But in all that time, not a single dream

Suns grow cold and beliefs forsaken

And through it all, I will not awaken

Years in billions pass by uncounted

With all my senses fully blunted

Wont be resting on some fairy cloud

Aren’t any noises that are too loud

Never gonna be either hot or cold

No more worries about getting old

There’s no alarms that I could hear

Not one old fear can reappear

Memories no longer get me upset

For now there’s nothing to forget

No news can bring me any grief

I rest so secure with no beliefs

Wont wake up when you roll over

Got no problem staying clean and sober

Can’t decide to trade rhyme for reason

Not concerned with form or function

Wont be scared of background silence

Don’t feel one pang of nagging conscience

All my thoughts so long since faded

Effects of my actions all fully dissipated

A few molecules of me swirl in the dust

Though I, too, swore ‘In God We Trust’

No more trying to save time

No career ladder left to climb

Don’t remember when I fell asleep

Wont wake up with the creeps

Now I’m bound to miss eternity

But there’s nothing more can ever bother me

Delivered from each and all my cares

Never to awaken, and no more nightmares

Sore Afraid To Leave Alone

        Mark 9:6 Peter knew not what to say: for they were sore afraid.

After I realized, as I sat in the dark, late at night, very much alone, I was drained to emptiness

I saw myself as I disappeared into that black hole of the void and, lo, I was indeed sore afraid

There was nothing to be done for me and no one would go with me for certainly: I had no destination

I was alone with my memories which were about to simply evaporate, with my tiny and silent passing

I finally saw the cold, emotionless certainty behind the noisy, content-free veil of our everyday life

And, no, not one of our currently-vogue One-true-saviors could grant me even the slightest comfort

This nano-bubble of consciousness would soon be swallowed by the black torrent of the universe

So though I could not face it, now I realized there was no direction to which I could even turn away

Somewhere far above I saw a brief, tiny spark and somehow knew it was me, as I streaked briefly

Anger was futile, there was no one to bargain with and only a deep resigned sadness remained

That infinite emptiness surrounded me, compressing my great fear of itself hard within me

I considered the dark abyss and briefly realized my unavoidable, everlasting, inorganic identity

I was as filled with certainty as any of my brothers who communed privately with his personal savior

My faith as unassailable as any illiterate Whateverstani who has memorized the Koran in arabic

I could never be disappointed as I expected an absolute nothingness that I would never even know

I saw that the eternal and everlasting had neither voice nor witnesses, or any motives or passion

Closing my eyes and ears did not help for that only clarified the black source of my great anxiety

I saw that I would only know that very first small step into an oblivion outside of measured time

I chuckled over my so-called legacy whose utter dissolution was just as assured as my own body’s

I knew this loneliness would soon evaporate into unbounded emptiness - and I grew sore afraid

My sustaining illusion of forever shattered in a thousand weightless pieces that quickly blew away

I frightened off a loathsome so-called man of god coming to try and sell me during my weakness

My attitude did not suit the family so they ascribed it to my condition and thereby could ignore it

But I remained secured to my dark vision though it left me totally empty and terrifyingly alone

Know That I Loved Life

Know that I stood in the painted caves in which they dwelt and took a bit of them away

I felt them as they stood behind me, hands upon my shoulder, helping to point my way

I saw fully my own short cycle in the informal death of insects and other forms of life

I knew eternity in the long pause between metronomic, meditative breaths

Know that I have felt life so very strongly that it has brought me to tears

I have loved and been loved for all of my best years

I have howled to the wind, the stars and the vast cold emptiness above

I caught sideways glances at the eternity into which my consciousness always slid

Know that my nostrils quivered and I needed to run off in the cool twilight

I understood that I wasted the vast proportion of the tiny time allotted to me

I watched those who gave me life as they showed me how I, too, must pass away

I struggled with and worried over unimportant issues, for far too many years

Know that I take the shame of certain actions with me as stones I cannot grind

I thank all of those, anonymous or dear, who always helped me in my blindness

I plunged onwards reckless and without direction too full of selfish cynicism

I came very late upon some small understanding of those who just quietly do what is right

Know that I could not accept my weakness and imperfections for far too long

But I was engulfed by the silence between the clock ticks on a Winter afternoon

I had to totally lose my way to realize I had never considered where I was going

I only began to escape my emptiness when at last it began to fill me up

         

Know that I was ever grateful for the sentience blindly granted me by the life force

I worshiped the wondrous cosmos but shunned all forms of religious orthodoxy

I struggled to express myself as intensely as the marlin, the tuna and the dolphin

I was taught to think and to question only to be forced to accept and to play along

Know that I believed in comfort and efficiency always proceeding hand in hand

I am ashamed of our unending commitment to hate and death through war

I am embarrassed by our thoughtless, foolish trampling of this sustaining earth

I believe that we are far too many now, to be so reckless, wasteful and error-prone

Know that I do not strive to attain so-called heaven and have no fear of any hell

I believe my thoughts and actions will gradually dissolve within the great entropy, over time

I fear the permanent loss of my mind more than being dead forever

Finally, Really Out Of Time

When you realize that you may be almost out of time

          Things swim into focus that you know now you never really noticed

The preciousness of the dullest moments you once ignored

          Become quite apparent as you are led off to be rewarded

A series of  last times and silent goodbyes lead to new conclusions

          And things as they are molt into merest memories for you

And though voices call out as you are peeled away

          The path you must take only leads you further and further astray

Then there are those few brief moments so inexplicable and sweet

          And you try to pause within them but they vanish like the dew

And if one finally realizes the very preciousness of the ordinary

          The busy world goes on around, quite unfairly, without a second thought

When at last perched on the brink of that chasm our thoughts can never fill

          Slowly grows an awareness of that awaiting unknown, so dark and so very still

Colors seem somehow brighter, familiar voices ring much more dear

          Though they don’t yet see it as clearly, their time is also very near

There is no more daily rush to nowhere then back again every night

          And now there is this fearful separation from the herd that you must fight

The burden of increasing uselessness grows heavy and confounding

          Food and drink can be tasteless with no real life to surround them

Memories boil up from places far away and all those times that did not last

          It becomes easy to imagine a hidden goodness in the distant past

Opportunities squandered and chances not taken return to haunt

          things you took for granted all those years re-appear just to taunt

Some come to sell you jesus, some come to relieve you of your assets

          The drugs remove your fight but still you lie awake in the night

Chance events from childhood on, strive to weave a full quilt of meaning

          Feverishly your mind keeps seeking some pattern before your leaving

The little ones are brought by to stand in wide-eyed apprehension

          friends and cousins may briefly pause and ask themselves a question

Some perish in a fiery instant, some linger painfully and grow quite bitter

          But many long-held but false assumptions will never even be reconsidered

Some may find great peace in knowing faith alone will see them through

          Others continue to ignore those who pimp religion’s pretty whore

All our lives we comfort in the fact that we always have tomorrow

So it’s quite hard to accept there is no more time to be borrowed

Can I draw from long hours spent praying or squandered in front of TV

          Do I await a re-uniting with those loved ones who left in front of me

Some make wondrous plans for a future others see shrouded in uncertainty

          Faith-based reservations can be made but arrival comes without a guarantee

We can still speak of someday but there are many things that won’t get done

          We can try to forget and to ignore but it will never be again like it was before

It was never supposed to come to this, not for me, in any case

          Dying was like being old, possible only for some other race

My grandma said she would never leave me, but long ago she went away

          I still did not grasp it all, even when mom and dad could not stay

And now as I lay here, so stiff and very still, I see others who have different plans

          To them it is very obvious I cannot escape, but that they most surely will

Not Going To Make It

there are times when I realize that I’m actually not going to make it

          in the afternoon when it is quiet, save for the ticking of a clock

then it’s twenty years ago or twenty years from now, but it is all the same

          and I’ll be gone for a long time, quite soon, in the larger scheme of things

the sun is shining across the mountains and on down into the room

          and things just pause a moment as I work upon my knees

I know for sure just then that I am not really going to make it

          and although I might shed a tear, it’s not for the fear, but for its beauty

in those unexpected times when we pause within a short reflection

          we sometimes catch a glimpse of, as far as we can see

then I saw myself as if it were from a different point in time

          I saw again the boy, this man thought was gone so long ago, elated

and in that same moment the sunset gently faded

          as the man now weak and old tried to remember from where he came

then I knew with certainty that I was not going to make it

          but still, time had passed me by quite slowly and left a quiet comfort

while the measured clock ticks guide the afternoon sun across the room

          I have nothing left to say, save a long and drawn out sigh

though there are many times that this illusion still vibrates complete

          far stronger are the moments when the real light shows me the way

in between the ordinary and the things which change our lives

          flows a deeper river that we must ford from time to time

as we stretch our legs to start upon another journey

          the shadow of the hand of time momentarily sweeps across us

so what time have we really saved even as we count it and where is it even now

          since in a stream of disjoint instants, we see that we cannot make it

there are those brief and lucid moments when I realize who I am

          a small boy frightened by not remembering never being of this world

slowly do the dust motes float through the slanting sun

          they have always held a place for me in their silent dance 

in between my feeble wheezings there is a parting of the clouds

          and far off in the distance I see clearly that I could never make it

in the quiet stillness that moves in to soothingly surround us

          after all the mundane chatter dies away, then it becomes so clear

in the million years before I came here and in the first million next to come

          I see that even those times are lost in the billions piled up on either side

as I realize that the sun never really pauses in my little room

          so I note with some sadness that there is also nothing I can stop and hold