remember your mortality
the wise-man says

know that your
flesh and bones
will die one day
and by happy with
it

you will live on
in your children,
in your work,
your memory will
float about on the
river of time

and the sage,
behind his white
beard,
rambles on and
on about his roman
wisdom
until
his bones turn to
dust
and his words
no longer
echo

as he dies,
moving on
to heaven or
no-where,
he leaves you
to remember your
mortality

how even great
men,
like him,
fade against
time’s beating
rays

your fingers and
your toes, all the
hairs on your head,
the works of your
hands, and spawn
of your ****

they bear against
the rushing waves,
of life and death
and history.

they cannot survive for-
ever

nothing,
ever can.

+

so these leaves us still perplexed

as to the meaning
of our very existence,
and to what death
is, and why it comes,
and why it corrupts
everything that ever
was

I come to you,
bearing a young face
and old eyes,
answering your
question with my booming
voice:

there is
none

forget your blood
and genes and eyes

forget the finger-nail
clippings and the dead
corpses of so many
soldiers

to live without meaning is freedom

the choice to make
what we can out of
nothing

that,

I say to
you,

is what it’s
all
about

+

I don’t think of death
I do not ponder at its cause
I do not wonder at its morals
I do not quest for its final
cure

I live,
in happiness,
thinking-

-knowing-

that this world
means nothing

and as I sip my drink,
and play my games,
and fall in and out of
love, I am not depressed
at thinking there is
nothing

in fact,
I am
relieved