That Good Black Light

Verily, I always have that soothing black light off the eternal emptiness deep inside to comfort me

That universal darkness is so secure and everlasting: My silent faith is as a featureless black monolith

Though my eyes were closed and my optic nerve severed, I would still perceive its blank perfection

I am utterly unable to be disappointed given the absolutely empty oblivion which I know awaits me

That wondrous and everlasting truth remains likewise blacker than anything my eyes can ever see

This good black light envelops their fairytale brightness that threatens to well up within me

I shine my black flashlight on all those unpleasantries that I really don’t want to have to perceive

I keep my black headlights on low beam to narrow my focus which really helps calm my fears

The royal coat of arms of my beliefs is that gaping black hole at the center of our galaxy

For, yea, all that endlessly increasing and irreversible darkness is the cornerstone of my faith

Totally devoid of any purpose or promise: Purest achromaticity simply has no way to ever fail me

Colorless, silent, empty, and consciousless: It draws me back, to diffuse me to nothing, forever

Assured of resting almost without motion, I will regain the universal standard of near absolute zero

I await with a true faith my certain return to the everlasting, unified formless from which I sprang

Black light shall always illuminate the empty dream during my eternal sleep without any awakening

Blessed with the absolute certainty of the inescapable, feature-free timelessness, I can rest at ease

Secure that I will never know any boundaries since I cannot ever again require any space at all

So briefly swept together to the top of this black tsunami, so soon to tumble back alone into its abyss

Maybe enough time to internalize the darkness before I am once again homogenized within it

I’m freed from their false choices regarding the multitude of worn-out and bogus, one-true-saviors

The infinite, conscious-free emptiness will instantaneously absorb and totally dilute my phony soul

The effects of my puny actions will hyperbolically approach nothing throughout whatever eternity

And the void already stands limitless - outside this one, always-expanding current universe

Philosophical arguments blow away with evaporating logic, imagination, thought and memories

I am assured of complete equality with all my brothers – criminal, rich, powerful, crippled or poor

Nothing makes no promises nor seeks any false bargain for the worthless faith of my fictional soul

The black is so much cleaner than their smoke, costumes, ceremonies, props, legends and lectures

I await an absolutely smooth and pointless, totally insensate and memory-free eternal peace

Don’t have any lavishly embellished myths or inane fictional heavens to appease my childish fears

I content myself with the promise of a conscious-free infinity, passing beyond my absent notice

And god’s so-called messengers here on earth are but transparently-comedic hustlers to me

Don’t have to choose to mortgage my fictional soul so I, too, never fret over attaining paradise

Praise be to that black light off the non-cognitive and permanent emptiness where I truly belong

But, I am no atheist given my absolute and unshakeable faith in my onrushing, permanent oblivion

For, indeed, I do believe in a totally peaceful, if un-sensed, eternity - without any wants or needs

Count me among the faithful for I firmly accept that the everlasting oblivion awaits us all

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

Finding My True Place In The End

Take a deep breath, at least one of the molecules entering your lungs came from Caesar's last breath. Enrico Fermi

There will still be a place for me amid the inorganic and the inanimate

Taking part in the complex cycles of the atmosphere here on earth

Cycling with the moon as she waxes and she wanes

Flowing with the tides in steady and peaceful respirations

Falling with the gentle rain from clouds of mist above the valleys

Crashing on a rocky shore with no one there to see

Carried upon the wind that always blows across the southern ocean

Inhaled by the plants in one form and respired in another

Circulating deep within the ocean around the globe for many centuries

Exposed with the dancing motes of dust backlit by a shaft of sunlight

Thrust up with the mountains built during vast tectonic plate collisions

Flowing with many different rivers through long inter-glacial epochs

Glowing with the northern lights in the star-filled Antarctic sky

Part of me in the rolling dawn and sunset that travel around the world

Ingested by the plant eaters and left behind to nourish wildflowers

Breathed in by living organisms to become part of them as well

Reacting in the upper atmosphere with the sunlight that sustains

Escaping into the quieter reaches where the planet’s gravity is not measured

Subducted down below the earth’s crust to flow up again with the liquid magma

Part of some few molecules in certain raindrops of every passing storm

Refracted briefly in a rainbow visible from one empty spot on the desert floor

Locked for centuries in the bogs or for millennia in coal deposits

Merging with the sun when it grows to claim us in its old age

Rippled by the passing of the cosmic background energy

Falling as snow and merging with the icecap for a thousand centuries

Rising with the smoke of countless burning fires

Riding with the earth around the sun, through the milky way, across the universe

Part of the biology of your sorrow and the chemicals released in your laughter

In one layer of stone finally exposed once more to the morning’s light

Helping conduct the voices of the birds and the calling of the insects

Freezing up as winter darkens, gliding down with the falling leaves

Blind chemicals from me reacting in someone’s creation of a work of genius

Consciousless but swirling, in those patterns perceived only by the living

Busy with the cycles of the inorganic and the radiations of the life force

Part of me was part of them and will be part of you as well as all of this

Pilgrimage To Infinity

It’s a long journey that I will not be taking

          It’s a big trip for which I do not need to pack

There are far-off destinations that I won’t ever see

          There are wondrous times coming that I will never know

There are uncounted eons past of which I have no memory

          There shall follow infinitely more, all just the same to me

It’s a long journey I am not undertaking

          It’s a trip lasting forever, leaving without me

It’s a pilgrimage to infinity which I make as unrelated molecules

          It’s the bonfire of the life force in which I sparked so briefly

There is wondrous beauty on billions of worlds I cannot know

          There are fascinating creatures that I will never catalogue

It’s a great journey I prepare not to be a part of

          It’s the only real voyage, but I must leave the group

Just as I fall aside so does our kind become separated

          Just as I am remerged so must this species re-enter the void

It’s an omni-directional profusion I will no longer observe

          It’s a hopeless sacred struggle in which we all must simply perish

It’s an epic journey in which there are no chapters named

          It’s a nonsensical contradiction to entropy and darkness

There is no knowable destination on this personal voyage of discovery

          There are endless connections whose richness I will not feel

Just as gravity lessens with distance, so fade my actions over time

        Just as some functions never quite reach zero, our influences must ever remain

It is a great river that casts us to the shore and moves on without malice

          It is necessarily more than just oblivious to my brief awareness

It’s a long journey in even the least promising directions, all at once

          It’s a trip with temporary passengers and no conscious destination

         

It’s a long journey that I won’t be taking but there is nowhere that I might remain behind

Nothing Can Do All Of This

        Everything in the universe comes out of Nothing – Tao Te Ching     
          nothing can prepare you for the afterlife among the stars

nothing can make you understand the meaning of a billion years

nothing can change the speed with which you return to cosmic dust

          nothing can teach you more than you knew when you were born

          nothing can only calm you if you ignore nothing at all

nothing can stop the decay that is your sacred birthright

nothing can defeat you even though there will never be a battle

          nothing can persuade you more completely than nothing at all

          nothing can hide you if there is nothing left of you to see

nothing can protect you since you remain here quite willfully

nothing can be part of you before well you learn to think

          nothing can hurt you if you hold on to it too tightly

          nothing can be forgotten until it is finally time to go

nothing easily assumes the place of everything you know

nothing can disappoint you when you still have expectations

          nothing can satisfy you given enough time and distance

          nothing can convince you that you have had too much

nothing can destroy you before you understand

nothing can identify you from the other faces in the crowd

          nothing can hypnotize you if you look it in the eyes

          nothing can delay you when you are in a hurry

nothing can be left alone if you really think about it

nothing can feel the same once you have it realized

          nothing can spoil the dreams of even the evangelical

          nothing can escape even the keenest of vision

nothing can evade the collective wisdom of the tribe

nothing can ignore the strength of our beliefs

          nothing can help you in your lonely vision quest

          nothing can relieve all of this earthly suffering

nothing can be counted on to be there in the end

nothing can reveal that for which we seek

          nothing can remove the sin they say emerged with birth

          nothing can cleanse us after all the sins of our lives

nothing can console us once we have lost it all

nothing can please those which nothing satisfies

          nothing can change our lives if we simply recognize it

As You Left

David Meyer, October 1, 2004

As you left

          I only knew for sure that I, too, would go

As you passed

          I asked in silence why not me

As sure as you were gone

          I was sure I would not stay

As you grew cold

          I watched myself grow very still

As you faded off in time

          I observed as I returned to dust

As you slipped away

          I found it made no real sense

As you parted company

          I dwelt upon my own farewells

As you moved on

          I caught a glimpse of all our pathways merging

As you disappeared

          I could see my own outline growing fainter

As you turned away

          I witnessed that there is nowhere left to turn

As you left us

          I felt the guilt of the living

As you sailed off

          I thought of myself sinking

As you grew so still

          I did not want to move

As you went off all alone

          I saw me leaving by myself as well