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