A Poem For Those Still Breathing
It thought we were are all dead.
Recent days I’ve thought it more.
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I didn’t know how to say I was dead
when I first thought i was,
I was busy dying.
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Like a young person close to eternal life,
so close they lose the ability to conjure words,
I was a old person just beginning to die
when I was first showed the idea
that i was already dead.
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Just enough conscience to know that i was dying,
but not a wordsmith enough to proclaim with conviction,
or even much sense.
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Now that I’m younger I accept that I’m dead
Not deader than a stone,
and no livelier than a starburst.
Vapid and empty,
dying towards more death.
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Dead and dying,
but surely not loathing,
just understanding,
with a smile.
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Dead,
just like it should be.
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Our death reflects outward, yes.
No, not spiraling inward,
outward like a starburst.
A balanced, eternal, peaceful starburst,
starbursting death.
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If you ever gaze up
in the midst of a deathly night,
you have seen this peaceful bursting.
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And if your eyes awoke
as you passed bustling streets, highways, and foot trails,
or holiday waterways and airways with little space to imagine life,
you’ve seen the chaotic starburst,
starbursting death.
-
Still,
undeniably death,
and dying.
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Everything is eternally bursting,
until another death begins.
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When did the dying begin?
It wont end.
Is it still ongoing?
It never began.
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We are death observing the dead.
We are dead observing the dying.
We are dying,
waiting to live.
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Almost vapid,
but stoping short.
Filled full,
of death,
and dead ,
and dying.
How hysterical!
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Ive observed many dead people,
i’d hope you have too.
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My mother brought me to my death,
my father helped too,
I just wasn’t dying within his womb,
at least the moment I was first introduced to death,
that was 18 deathly revolutions from now.
Not to mention a couple of uncounted cycles of spinning death too.
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I’ve heard my mothers mouth claim about her eyes:
they’ve seen more withering deaths than you!
But all the while my eyes were watching.
Her death is a wiggling and reflexing and scratching death,
a clawing for life,
but still dying.
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I’m still watching,
she’s still clawing
and I’m still dying.
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The greatest joy is observing my own death,
its a grand death,
a grand spectacle.
My song of death carries a jovial rhythm.
There aren’t many deaths more grand than my own,
if at all.
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I don’t expect you to take pride in my death,
at least compared to your death.
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But really,
your death and my death,
its just one starbursting finale of death.
-
Upon itself,
over again,
vapid.
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It takes a great strength to love
to be jovial as we die.
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And it’s a rancid capitulation
to want to live,
to want to numb,
to want to hide,
to want to run.
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No one escapes their death,
some leave death with a frown.
I’ll leave my dying with a smile,
a big one.
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I’ll be smiling and basking in all my death and dying
that my almost done-dying body got to experience,
as I lay on my life bed.
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I hope I get to share some time
and revolve and spin with you,
as we die.
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And one day,
sometimes without warning
and sometimes with all too much warning,
we are whole.
By jove!
That day we become alive!
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And all the dying and dead gather round,
observing us on our life bed,
wondering what it must feel like to be alive.
And they’ll burry us a short six feet under,
to mark the memory
of our time spent,
dying.
And we,
we spend eternity,
living.
—
By Isaac Sweeney
thegemsofparadise.com
July 21, 2023
Luverne, Minnesota, USA
