Life and death—O, what else is left,

But to calculate the many intermediate steps,

Which wade through the subconscious of life

Like a reed cutting the water as a knife?

I waver in dandelions dancing on the wind

With no one to lead or even guide them,

Save for the ancient mysterious breath,

Stinking with the hot aroma of death.

I covet the dead, lying still in their sleep—

Never stirring a moment from their solemn keep

In which they lay like stones sunk in the pond,

Stuck deep in the mud and silt as a bond.

Pray bury my body deep within this state—

Hasten away with my final everlasting fate!

Do not let me continue in this way,

Wherein I destroy life day after day.

Let me succumb to the onerous task

Of losing my life and breathing my last,

That I might go unto the depths of darkness,

Blind and deaf in the shadow of nothingness.

Count out each step, I must now in this life,

When all I long for is the end of all strife,

Which might be found at the end of a rope,

At the tip of a bullet, or the end of all hope.

To cease striving, commanded am I—

Yet still in my despair, I walk in these lies—

Truths of a sort, which I’d rather quickly lose,

In addition to my ability to again ever choose.

Wisdom does speak and says thus she so

To abandon my fate, to let it all go

Into the hands of the Almighty one,

Who shall make of me one done and undone—

Till I should render no more a cry,

As in the day that I should truly die;

For death is but a consequence of all true fate,

But it is a consequence that comes as too late,

Erecting in my place, in my stead, in my self

The memory of something and somebody else,

That which I was not and nor can ever be,

Save for the hopeless who cannot see.

Bid farewell to all that was once dear

And enter into the land lying over there.

Curious and morbid my fancy with death may be,

But it is far more morbid and curious to me

That one should not account for the days ahead

Or those behind, through which we are led

By some mysterious force that presses us on

To live and to live like some markedly low pawn,

Until we should enter into the jaws of death,

Forgetting all we ever have done in one final breath,

Losing ourselves into the everlasting grip,

Which holds us fast in its eternal keep.

Long I for this loss and losing away

Of all that I am and all my dismay

To find that hope in my everlasting demise,

Wherein I shall lose all my mortal disguise.

Death, be you my friend and true confidant,

The one to whom I echo my prayers of want,

Leaving in you the shadows of my past,

Finding full freedom in ceasing to last.

I pray that one day I shall be hid in you deep

Like the immortal ones who in you do sleep,

Sound as a baby, which is put down to rest

Leaving this life behind with all of its tests.

Eager I am as the babe to its mother’s tit

To lose my life, my wisdom, and all of my wit—

For what is left of all that I have done

Will be nothing more than what is to come

And be done and undone and redone,

As life is but one empty conundrum.