"unlived" poems
I am haunted:
Not by poltergeist,
but by my unlived lives.
Parallel universes
won't ever speak,
they took an oath
to keep from me.
I have words and voices
humming in my head
that will never be met
outside of my bed.
I have to accept
I cannot have it all,
I have to accept
knowing nothing at all.
Dec 27, 2018
Dec 27, 2018 at 11:06 AM UTC
Afraid not of mistakes,
but a chance not taken
Afraid not of aging,
but a youth spent wasted
Afraid not of death,
but a life unlived
Apr 25, 2017
Apr 25, 2017 at 9:40 AM UTC
Candle lights and a day long sigh
Gray evening tea resting by
the journal
which's last page I thought I'd pen today;
But I can't seem to narrate,
today's unfolding
about how the world I knew
Put off it’s last enchanting shred;
And I knew then
I needed a merciful blackout
before the ink of my pen
starts to fade by my fresh tears;
But I never knew when
my hands stopped to listen
And now, pieces of my favourite teacup
on the mosaic,
mirrored my heart, precisely broken;
But its quite strange,
how after seething fury and wounded heart
i still got up ,
buried my face in linen covered pillows
as this sudden tiredness consumed my limbs,
Maybe Lord of the heavens had mercy on me
and granted me this sudden dreamy trance
And made my heart do witchcraft, so intense,
It hypnotised me to immerse myself in the indulgence
of cherishing the unlived memory yet again;
Jun 15, 2022
Jun 15, 2022 at 6:53 AM UTC
This poem is dedicated to the fallen of the First World War, and also, to all those we have lost in the years since.
- Somme Harvest -
In the early morning
Dawn of the fiery horizon,
The sea of green caresses the land
And gave it gentle kisses
Of tender sadness.
On this day many an unlived life would find
Life in Death, but first must come Death in Life,
Indeed, a bouquet of barbs grace the
Dark, dank, *****
Halls of Morningstar,
Servants go to and fro preparing the sordid feast
Of unsung heroes.
Babes in arms are they, who shall
Ever sleep till the break of the final day.
Fields of Flanders infertile,
But for the harvest to ripen
The fertilizer of life is
Scattered, battered, tattered,
Sown,
Human manure, nutrient of vitality,
It seeps into earthly soil.
In the year of our Lord,
One thousand, nine hundred and sixteen
Did the farmers collect their greatest bounty,
Not all farmers reaped massive yields,
Farmers Kultur, Sickle and Hammer
Fed their maniacal hunger with rotting corpses,
While famers Lion, Bulldog and Bald Eagle
Wept their hunger with mechanical eyes,
Farmer Scythe, steward of Morningstar,
Laughed dry, dead tears of hungry joy
And sang the golden harvest song
As his blade swam through the harvest thirstily,
For indeed, the harvest was an endless
Smoky sea of blood green
And thousands were sailing.
Twilight gleaming through the sky,
The raging war god vomit’s dry thunderous wrath
And wreaks barbaric, savage, ferocious, ****** carnage below,
As sleeping
Babes in arms fly through the red twilight.
Vultures dressed in human feathers
Gather and crowd around their congealing cold feast,
With hatred sewn on their
Lifeless, lidless
Blind eyes,
They shriek their throaty, ******
Thankless prayers to idle gods.
A multitude of thousands upon thousands
Of souls sour to the heights of Mount Olympus,
Unshed tears,
My child, I saw you in that dusky evening half-light,
Flying, soaring and rising higher with your
Brothers-in-arms.
As I looked up at the darkening sky
My heart wept warm tears of ebbing love,
While my eyes forever dimmed the light,
And my baby,
My body became the Earth,
The phoenix has nested.
Nov 11, 2011
Nov 11, 2011 at 6:04 AM UTC
Slick grass glistened heavy
After summer showers fell before a sun
That trickled veiled toward transcendent trees
Towered on the outskirts of the demesne - It unsheathed
A pearlescent canvas for a dreamer who paints ideals;
A reader finding signs in smiles and glances
Strolling paths free of fear to free imagination;
Summoning hopes against a fresh red/orange
Backdrop, and ignoring perilous heights to cast
A thought to moments yet unlived -
This fool's masterpiece.
Aug 9, 2015
Aug 9, 2015 at 8:07 AM UTC
too many lies have made me blind
i'm just trying to make myself feel and be better, but i wasn't a great partner.. always two sides to the story
she pointed out things i already knew about myself, i'm not perfect but i try to be patient with myself... if I could I would've rushed the process
i'm worth it, yes... i think... but sometimes it doesn't feel like i'm worth my next breath of air
i've always had an issue with that until it backfired, one bullet turns into 100
right at me, if they were real i wouldn't try to dodge
questioning the "logic" behind these emotions
imaginary weight? but it's dragging me down before the sun rises again
i don't have anything to believe in, i'm not the one for her... is what she's decided
nothing is right for me... after endless mental agony
facts don't make me feel better, but it's good to be honest
always better to be honest... things are **** at the moment
there's nothing to do but live through it again
i was... dumb to think otherwise
they say to step away at first sign, but you always want to try to fight it
for the sake of making things work, even if they don't
i've given up plenty of times, this time it feels like i shouldn't again
when i should, again
here it comes
i get it, i get it
ahhhhhhhhhhh
yes i'm flawed... i know... i'm still... growing eww
sooner or later
"just let her go"
it's so simple... she's vanished
and it wasn't meant to be, but i thought she was the one to settle down with afterall
she's hung up on an image, multiples
if it makes me feel better, believe it
she just wasn't into me
just focus.. on living, not just exisiting
imagine loving someone that doesn't love you back
thinking about a certain future that's been taken away
my mind is lost right now.... i'll let it run for a bit until i can catch upppp
dreams unlived
i dreamt about our kids last night and I forgot to tell you
an ending with too many photos to feel alive to
Jul 26, 2022
Jul 26, 2022 at 5:23 PM UTC
In a creche,behind the mesh in Zanzibar or Bangladesh,kids are reigned in,chained up,emptied of the loving cup that childhood gives,
who lives like this so they can miss the fun of being young?
who sticks the chiv in,trims the day,who works them for so little pay?
Look in your high street shops at hopscotch clothes from hopscotch kids in hopscotch homes, on the skids and before you buy,before you try on one more suit born from some child's unlived youth,the truth is out there in the things you buy,'cry freedom'in your cheap t-shirts and cut price flowing patterned skirts,but
the truth remains and stains your heart as sure as if you were a part of sweatshops sweating out the lives of tiny tots and will high street shops, always be the outlets for this insanity?
I'm sure the answer will arrive
eventually.
Mar 21, 2014
Mar 21, 2014 at 1:07 AM UTC
White walls empty walls pure white
Such an infinite blank canvas
Enriched with expectation
Of all that may come to pass
White walls empty walls pure white
A life unlived a life unwritten
In the time of innocence
Before life's hurt has bitten
White walls empty walls pure white
A face unlined a heart unbroken
A heartbeat dancing with joy
The fatal lie still unspoken
White walls empty walls pure white
A hand untouched a hurt undefined
Everything left to play for
No need yet to hit rewind
White walls empty walls pure white
Fingers unburnt tempted by fire
Scorched seared and blackened
A soul emptied of desire
White walls empty walls pure white
A mind in prison a mind in chains
Lost without an exit sign
In a land where chaos reigns
White walls empty walls pure white
Boundaries of a life unloved
Scarred with the marks of torment
But those walls have never moved
May 16, 2016
May 16, 2016 at 8:26 AM UTC
Wishing to rewrite history so for once I would live life without stressful seconds
Without worrying about tomorrows and if my borrowed time is up
Or if this should be my last cup off hazy weekends and hangover weekdays
For the routine is played as if the DJ only has one song
One CD and the mix is just for me
As though that one CD is the expression of caged songbirds like me
Like this is the person I am meant to see, the tortured soul that is me can only be freedom
when I **** the seed that was embedded into me.
Into the blood I bleed I feed the monster as I pass the **** and tell the bartender one more for me…
Why can’t you see that this is the death of people like me?
For when songbirds are gifted free rage to sing the songs come out like these.
The songs sing of life unlived of time retracted from clipped wings
Just so I could be programmed to do similar things
Building a time machine so when the next songbird sings
No one will be able to clip her wings
For familiar eyes will be hypnotized for uniform leaves no room for originality
Copycats killing the freedom of the minority
Exterminate the majority and give me life
Or if not pass the knife for this uniform life is whipping out the songbirds rights
To give the world a song to sing and melody to remember
A chorus to write
With fingers of talent controlled by minds that wonder with imaginations to explore
The songbirds cry a song I wish not to hear anymore.
Sep 14, 2010
Sep 14, 2010 at 6:15 PM UTC
Before the flight takes off
Before our ascent into the skies
Before I'm unplugged from the grid
Before I'm temporarily disconnected
I think about what I'll miss,
If the flight never landed.
I think about the goals unfulfilled
People unmet, sights unseen
Words unsaid, tears uncried
Emotions unshared, pain unfelt
Fights unhad, hands unheld
Stories untold, lives unlived
But most of all,
I think of you.
And feel
Hope.
Mar 26, 2023
Mar 26, 2023 at 2:28 AM UTC
There have been so many moments
that I have missed.
Completely escaping from my pen.
Writing feels almost foreign to me,
It’s been so long.
I feel ill-equipped, unprepared,
Not qualified in the slightest.
The thoughts that are buzzing around my brain
Refuse to transplant themselves
Onto the paper in front of me
They reject and avoid these
New environments.
I don’t know. I suppose
I sympathize for them, they’re afraid
Scared little thoughts, terrified of judgement
Aren’t I not the same?
Existing is a scary concept for all of us
I’m sure
But I think the best of us learn to hide, to confuse
The clock begins to tick down
My eyes are getting
Worse by the minute
I can feel it, I can live it.
And it’s getting
infinitely harder to breathe
To the point where I visit
The doctor for help.
Once again,
There’s too much time
I conclude
Too many possibilities
It all sounds terrible. What am I supposed to do.
Unruly and untamed I stroll through my exhibition
My disappointments, my unlived-in potential
Of unspoken thoughts, of uncommunicable feelings
They seem to be enjoying themselves
Enjoying the company, enjoying the rest
I suppose I would to.
It’s difficult to choose one to expose,
One to leave out
For the sun to eventually dry out
One to abandon forever.
I don’t know how to say goodbye.
I’ve never been good with farewell.
Not quite sure what I’m doing here
Brain where have you been.
I yell out to nowhere in particular.
What’s going on.
Please answer soon,
Because the clock is ticking down
And I remember a time where
Writing used to be my salvation,
But now writing seems to have
become nothing more than the source of
my everlasting frustration.
I hope things shift soon,
I hate being so far out of the loop,
Being so far from who I used
To be, the person I believed was me.
Maybe things will change, they have to.
Jun 22, 2018
Jun 22, 2018 at 8:57 PM UTC
.....a day's, or a night's inspiration
just walks away
and escapes my mental grasp
an idea, pregnant with possibilities,
suddenly becomes infertile, like
a barren woman, or a wasteland
i try to get hold of it,
still...it glides away, falling along the
edges of my imagination.
i am bereft,
when my muse has left.
::::::::::::::
sometimes,
i eagerly dip, and wiggle my toes
on a sunny blue river that
manifests itself in my mind,
bursting with promises of new insights...
yet, a slightly curving path is hard to ignore
for, it easily presents itself......and
sometimes,
i give in to its swirls of unfulfilled
dreams, and....sublime moments,
hovering, like a hummingbird
quivering...in my own space,
there in neverlandia, where i'm left
pondering, about a life......unlived.
:::::::::::::::
my toe-dipping moments,
my rare moments of serenity,
are short-lived........ruffled,
besieged by old shadows,
because....phantoms of fear
refuse to die.
::::::::::::::::::::::
sometimes,
when treading this curved path,
unwanted, unexpected
circumstances occur,
and, all of a sudden,
my muse emerges from hiding.
inspirations bloom,
like mushrooms,
bolder,
than those that elude(d) me.
:::::::::::::::::::::::
sometimes,
it takes a while,
for love and life
to rhyme.
::::::::::::::::::::::
Sally
Copyright February 10, 2018
rrab
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Feb 26, 2018
Feb 26, 2018 at 11:31 PM UTC
Moments lost,
Adrift in the sands of time
Regret stains the soul
As unlived dreams linger
Life erodes,
Memories fade to sepia
Worn and disillusioned
The spark of life wanes
She struggles
To reignite
Her lust for life
Kelly Rose
© April 12, 2017
Apr 12, 2017
Apr 12, 2017 at 5:30 PM UTC
The dying
The dead
The forgotten
The unlived dreams.
She was 12
He was 8
They trailed west
But just became meat
One ***** beaten, ***** and ate
The other just ate.
Shaved memories of something
Something said by somebody
Oh, a little girl
Said the sun would whirl
And the moon would bow
Means nothing to a dead and cooked cow.
They make concentric circles
In and out
The Taliban
Spreading goodness wherever they go...
Just after eating
A little boy and girl.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 3:55 PM UTC
She sits there, fingers twitching erratically
Hands clasping, unclasping over each other
With the sunlight fracturing through rippled eyelids
I imagine I can almost see right into her eyes
Like paper soaked through with tears
But then she lowers her head
Shoulders sag from her weighted thoughts
Rays now falling to her ocean of hair
I wouldn't mind
But I can see the weariness she feels
She sits cross legged
But yet her back is weathered with unlived age
Her half smile barely reaches her lips
And her eyes
They're closed to contain the break lapping under her lashes
They're closed to trap the tears threatening to become lakes
They're closed and I don't mind
There's never a shortage of her to immerse myself in
Now it's her hands
Her hands are still moving
Wrinkles disturbing the still waters
Visions of waves promising to drag me down
To suffocate me among the depths of all I love of her
Trust me
I won't mind
Nov 14, 2015
Nov 14, 2015 at 7:49 AM UTC
I cried myself to the shower last night.
I used boy shampoo over the arms that I’ve been scratching for hour, four hours spent trying to get the blood I hated so much to come up and sit on my skin like it was their art gallery, hanging on for display.
It never came.
I run water over me burning tears into camouflage,the words of an empty life stung to my head as if the thoughts branded it here on me permanently.
I’ve had nights like this before.
Nights where I put on the loosest pajamas I could find, the ones with ESPN written written as read as the books on my old library shelf. The ones I took when my brother went to work and left me by myself, the ones that made me feel manly, even if I didn’t look like a man.
I wouldn’t put a shirt on.
My chest was bare, not in the way I wanted, but I couldn’t tear off my breast and give them to a girl who wasn’t born with them, I’d just have to stare till my stomach growled and tears streamed down my face, fears of a life unloved and unlived made me put on a loose shirt and tell myself I wasn’t hungry, so instead I thought of you.
You, with your crooked smile when you see me at your doorstep with the sun’s colors draped in a bouquet. I show up in a fox shirt, the one I call lucky, and you count each and every one and you point out how dorky I am.
You, with your back on the mattress of the cheapest apartment we could find, reading love letters I’ve written to your baby sister over the phone, telling her of all my love in the distance of thousands of miles. I try to pretend I can’t hear you from the kitchen as I make you tea, the lemon juice coating it bronze with the color of its juice, your vase holds out bright sprouts of happiness as a centerpiece.
Daisies plague my mind on nights like these. They’re scattered at your funeral & my own on our graves, at the fifty yard mark.
“We’ve been rolling together since we were 25.”
Nights like these remind me that my masterpiece is so far, even if the dasies are so close, so near.
Nov 14, 2017
Nov 14, 2017 at 1:28 PM UTC
Don’t believe them (*the books the fairy tales the
romantic comedies*) when they tell you,
“Love will find a way.”
They are liars, spinning words like
the Serpent to Eve.
Love does not always prevail.
Sometimes, you are twenty and stupid and
far too drunk
and when you wake up in the morning, he is gone.
Sometimes you think, “I’ll tell him tomorrow,”
and tomorrow never comes.
Sometimes, he is the groom and you are the girl at the back of the church he once dated in college and forgot about.
Sometimes, you are the bride and because this isn’t Hollywood,
no one stops the wedding.
Sometimes, you wait up until four o’clock in the morning
for his call.
Sometimes, it never comes.
Sometimes, he dies.
Sometimes, you do.
Sometimes, you fight and yell and sob into the phone to your mother—
who married too young and never really knew how to care for you anyway—
but no matter how many dishes you throw,
you just can’t make it work.
Sometimes, he is a man when you marry him
and a monster by the time your daughter is born.
Sometimes, you drop your change in the supermarket, the mall, the
subway, and when your fingers brush as you both reach down to scoop up the scattered pennies and dimes, you feel that
electric shock.
You look into his deep graygreenbluebrown eyes and see
everything that will be: all the adventures not yet had, the promises not yet made—
and then, amidst all that unlived life, his wife (girlfriend, fiancé)
calls to him from twenty feet away
and those promises never get made at all.
Sometimes, you like him and he likes the girl
with the long blonde hair and
prettier smile.
Sometimes, he likes you and you
honestly just don’t give a ****
Sometimes, there is no Prince Charming on a great white steed coming to battle the dragon.
Sometimes, you have to save yourself.
Sometimes, survival is the only happy ending.
Sometimes, your families are feuding and no matter how much you try,
you cannot reason with your father or mother or
whoever is keeping you apart.
Sometimes, after that, you both just die.
Sometimes, it’s all about the timing.
Sometimes, you go in one door and he goes out another,
And then you never meet.
Sometimes, you sob into your pillow and beg God to change his mind for you,
but no amount of wishing can bring him back.
Sometimes, you are separated—by culture, by Time, by
universes, by a fate that has decided to break your heart in
every way possible and then toss you out to sea just
one last time, just to see if you’ll survive.
Sometimes you never find that someone who makes your skin burn, who
drives you crazy or keeps you sane.
Sometimes, you are just lonely and then you die.
Love doesn’t always prevail.
But sometimes.
Just sometimes.
It does.
Feb 27, 2012
Feb 27, 2012 at 1:15 AM UTC
In Neverland - never to grow old
never to marry that sweetheart
never to have children and grandchildren
nor watch hair thin and grey.
Full of derring-do - more dash than discipline
lanky and loose-limbed they swank and saunter
not like soldiers at all
no doff the cap humility
to the old rules and distant monarchies.
From a newly stolen world
hardly secured or steady with itself
lodged on the edge of a vast continent
clinging to a rim of turquoise blue.
Now cramped
in the pock-holed sores of ancient lands
richly bone-dusted from time to time.
Waiting for the fight to end
to go ‘back home’ ‘over there’
to farms and factories; schools and stations.
Still there - left behind
in the archipelago of cemeteries
as far as Fromelles, Pozieres,
to Bullencourt and Paschendaele
in fields of beetroot and corn,
fields bleeding red with poppies
beside the Menin Road at Ypres
in bluebelled woods of Verdun
in the silt of the Somme
on the plains of Flanders
in the victory graves at Amiens
Monash’s boys - the lost boys
cried for their mothers
begged for water
screamed to die
hung like khaki bundles on the wire.
Commanded by Field Marshalls
who never went to the fields,
who played the numbers game
in a war of bluff and bluster,
who never touched the dirt and slime,
nor waded through the ****** slush
of broken men and boys,
never waist-deep in mud and sinking,
wounded and drowning in that shambles of a war
Wearing dead men’s boots
and shrapnel-holed helmets
tunics and leggings splattered and rotting
with dead men’s blood and brains
Some haunted boys came home
knapsacks full of secret pictures,
old rusty tins crammed with suffering
breast pockets held their grief
wrapped in shroud-shreds.
They brought their duckboard demons
to the world of peace
Gas-choked fretful lungs still brought
the caustic fumes with every breath exhaled
and from every pore the death-sweat of decay.
But most boys were lost boys
lost forever in that no-man’s land
that Neverland of lives unlived.
© M.L.Emmett
Nov 10, 2015
Nov 10, 2015 at 12:32 PM UTC
Enchanted by a set of ocean tinted eyes.
They cast me through to precious times,
Of unlived highs and endless nights.
We gaze on to the other side,
And drift out with the tide.
Your touch transmits a frequency,
Forever fitting into me.
The tops of trees kiss the breeze,
That leads us to the Crystal Sea.
And here is where we find ourselves,
Sipping on wet rain drop tea;
Tasting of love's luxury.
So I embrace this new found face,
And trust in all the light,
That is seeping right,
From under you.
(Oh how I think you're beautiful)
Soaked in truth,
Like the wet full moon,
Gracing upon the ever-ocean.
We glide through time and onto bliss: Perpetual Motion.
And I could ride this all the way downtown.
With the breath of your love and your heart beat's sound.
I wanna breathe in your love and hear your heart beat loud.
And I might cry.
Might shout and try,
To wake me from this obvious dream.
Sometimes it seems,
Like this couldn't be real.
Oh, you're such a big deal.
But I know it's true by the way I feel.
So it does live on, this lovely trip lives
Right where my tongue left your lips.
Where the sun drips onto the wet full moon,
Filling our glasses with a love tycoon.
Lost in the soundwave of your soul,
That's singing a tune so pure and whole.
Oh, I wanna get down,
To the deep ends of town.
So I follow your heart beat's sound.
**((((((( *** )))))))**
Jul 23, 2014
Jul 23, 2014 at 1:57 AM UTC
Who can sing his heart?
Garotted by sins long gone
I am a may-fly.
Creek flows ever on,
Yellow blossom drifts downstream.
What is permenance?
A snake sheds his skin.
A man sheds his face the same;
No pearl is alike.
A dream is a fish:
Whole life spent in murky depths
In search of context.
The sea seems a mood.
Only asleep do I swim,
When awake, I drown.
My bones are the shore:
Skeleton of vibrant ghosts
Lapping sorrow's tide.
A drum un-beaten
Is a life unlived. In spring,
The woodpecker cries.
Consuming the grown,
Spreading hopeful seeds to spring:
A sigh is a bird.
My breath was forecast:
The winds are a waterfall,
All the world is wind.
There was an oboe
Who said "Don't follow the score,
Let me sing your heart."
Mar 25, 2013
Mar 25, 2013 at 6:00 PM UTC
My father and my uncle
grew up on the streets
of Chicago, tough streets
for kids to roam.
Uncle Sal was a lanky guy,
with a Pork Pie hat and an
attitude, he took no ****
but had a heart that was pure.
At nineteen Uncle Sal
died in Korea before he
lived for real. I still have the
Bronze Star they gave him.
A **** poor exchange for
a life unlived.
I never got to know Uncle Sal,
but I sure wish I had, maybe
even just a little bit.
May 12, 2017
May 12, 2017 at 2:36 PM UTC
even a week is sometimes
not enough to recuperate
from a novel -
something has borrowed too much
time and expects its worth a miracle of
a penny found on the road of
the eternal walker:
long the road toward a majesty
of the riches...
whatever novel it might be -
and with it,
a paralyzing ****** of doubts -
whether sober or intoxicated,
not even when: wine and music
and a book of poetry suffices...
just like now:
Beethoven, kalimotxo,
and the preferred gems by
Frank O'Hara to suit the music...
chez jane and blocks...
if ever there is something
missing in terms of
Beethoven: it's a voice reading
a poem,
but not reading it,
not like a Beatnik who would
read in the furore of jazz
in the past century...
anything more than what
is still not a whisper...
and like some farce of
the sword of Damocles...
the pen of Dickens...
not the labours of a novel,
no... not the month's long
journey into the labyrinth...
music and drinking
simultaneously with a novel
will never work...
but a poem can...
my god... some wine some
classical music and... words...
when there's music and wine
who needs words like
labyrinths when:
just on the tip of the hour's
passing: a bird in the form
of a poem...
all i can say in the most mundane
phrasing...
but i have capitulated
all prior to thrill and audacity
for a novel...
a month's labour:
and silence...
a soul in such hiding...
feels hardly a thought necessary
to reinvent itself in its prior
activity:
an mingling of wine
and music and words: come and go...
like all novels:
as much an accomplishment
of the writer, as an "accomplishment"
of the reader...
and is it so wrong
to not be agitated with emotion
that: a month's worth of
base arithmetic sentences -
the logic of: once upon a time
as the logic: the end...
sanctity of prose:
that sensible nature of that
sensible afternoon
of that sensible life,
of that: unlived crucifix
of a shadow's confiscate;
routine and sitting
akimbo on some far removed
stage:
of a sea knocking
on the door of earth -
seeking rhythm -
or a heart.
as mundane as this language:
i'm not going
to find a different language
to change this evening,
even though not awe:
or relief... but a paralyzing
doubt has overpowered me...
and, come to think of it:
that's still much more
than a heart's worth of
sitting's comforts in
the armchair of apathy.
Jan 16, 2019
Jan 16, 2019 at 7:25 PM UTC
isn't it a shame how
one little memory ruins
such appetizing scenery?
a bus stop by a hotel.
empty church parking lot.
the riverside pier.
if I could frame those spaces
and show you what I saw
maybe you'd change your mind.
a fear of falling fast.
stumbling youth left unlived.
promises broken.
Feb 23, 2014
Feb 23, 2014 at 3:35 AM UTC
I tell you, you gloomy ones,
that life is beautiful.
Life is beautiful
in all its depths of
suffering and misery and pain
in all its depths of
striving and joy and pleasure.
I tell you, you nihilists,
one draws breath only once,
passes into and fades out of life only once.
Yet you are to tell us it is worthless,
this gift given to us all by chance?
I tell you, you Christians,
and all your compatriots
who hate the flesh and the earth,
who promise more life through
sons of virgins and husbands of children,
that nothing awaits after death.
"Memento mori!”
Why must you always
chime this in our ears?
Why must you fill
men with such anxious fears?
Many a man rules his life to this,
dreads and gasps and despairs to this,
prays that he may never come to this,
but you delude him on,
promising life after life.
I tell you, that
when we die, we cease ourselves to be.
Our senses stop their feeling,
our hearts stop their beating,
our brains stop their thinking,
and without those functions,
there ends a man.
So there are no souls
to greet gods in heavens,
nor any demons
to meet in hells,
only the ground we stand on,
and the caskets underneath.
Is this frightening?
Maddening, to think we must one day
cease to be and become nothing?
But death is not nothing;
Death is only a new dance of atoms.
When one thing tumbles,
it returns to the earth,
through one step or another,
to waltz and dissemble and collide
to make new things and again asunder.
With death, one only
plays one's part
on the grand stage of things.
Do not be afraid then,
of death;
do not let it frighten you,
that you will be
pointless, forgotten, or condemned.
Do not let it terrify you
into leaving your life unlived.
And so I tell you,
you gloomy ones,
you Christians, you nihilists, you sufferers,
remember that you must live.
Embrace life,
this shortness of time,
love every moment of your being,
in all its depths of
suffering and misery and pain,
in all its depths of
striving and joy and pleasure.
Jan 19, 2014
Jan 19, 2014 at 6:25 PM UTC