Living inside a breaking
Body I'm aching with maladies
Not well at ease but I'm okay
Still making melodies;
The drugs they ease but they don't
Cure, I won't be taken hostage
In caustic flesh and cracking bones
My own body is the carnage.

But I'm not afraid of death,
No, it's -- it's something else instead.
What I dread isn't losing life
It's who I'll miss when I'm dead;
When I'm lying there she will  
Be too but neither of us morose --
I'm maybe gross but not quite gone
Her love's the only dose
   I'll need

I'll say Farewell to Arms -- but --
I can't quite say Farewell to You --
My true goodbyes were tied to stone
I've thrown deep in skies of blue

I realize as I depart
Her part's so sweetly auspicious --
But I'm the only one to know
I grow soft secrets surreptitious.
   and --
The Reaper cracks a smile
All the while his autopsy;
He sees my life through his lens,
Carrying me off into
   **Eternity