A figure lurks in the shadows,
its gaze fixed on me,
expectant
hungry
lifeless.

As I walk on the narrow path
of life – unaware at first,
I feel its presence
slowing my steps with unseen weight
like stones filling my pockets underwater.
The sun dims when its near,
colours leaching from the world.
I want to run,
but the path narrows,
thins to a tightrope beneath me.

The figure waits
forever patient,
sometimes distant as mountains,
sometimes close as my own shadow.

It grabs the coattails
of my existence,
clawing its way closer
with each heartbeat,
each exhale,
each moment of forgetting.
Until I can feel
its breath
on my neck.

It whispers in the voice I know too well,
murmurs dressed as memory,
lullabies of failure,
groans of what might have been.

I do not turn,
But I know it waits.

A figure lurks in the shadows,
Still, I walk on.
I have places to go
Before it takes me.

If not any others,
We harbor one advantage,
Our mortal human soul.

So go on,
Let your heart keep beating,
Never accept defeat!

Ever since I was a child,
I counted all the ways we could die—
falling through ice, an earthquake,
Even the weather seems to panic.
Somewhere in the world, right now,
A fish is struggling to get by.
But it dies by the hand of a man.
who thinks death is a pastime.
We die small deaths every time—
Like scissors in hair, shedding of skin
when I knew all the ways he would leave
Once, just once in my life,
I want to feel delicate.
Not like the hole in the drywall.
shaped like a fist.
Once, I want to shred the list.
that contains all the ways we could miss
Just once, I do not want to be sharp.
like a cutting knife, like a blade
Even in death, there is rebirth—
flies, mites, beetles,
feeding on someone’s deathbed.
From just one conversation,
I could smell the rot—
the body left untouched for a month,
Is it wrong to say?
That ever since I was a child
I lived with ghosts in my house.
And I was never soft in my life.
just bones and flesh
with a brain filled with living death.

We are lit,

We burn,
We flicker,
We die.

The practice,
the accepted right, good enough,

as with practice one's fingers learn,
each note, each tempo, each stain

eradicated, recollected and confessed,
irrational as time running the other way,

life, the experience, surviving any way,
eventually, we rest, or die while fretting why.

Commune with the chorus calling our attention,

as we, this pair, this form mankind can take,
readily, from the source, in truth a child knows,

if given half a chance,
if one causal agent takes patience to perfect

the unwanted child,
to fill the will
to become
the utmost valuable kind
of thing that ever is
contained in minds of our kinds,
a vessle to hold golden oil used for light.

Yes, light hearted frolicking's toddler's joys,

recalled from memory, as if ever with us,
this strength willing to make of us, this

mind involved in finishing the refurbishing,
so the sword of truth glistens rust free,
as the finest whetstone hones this edge,
minding our manner of thinking we know,

if
then
this that we aspired to, inspired by you, is
the entire you, foil plural mind to my weform,
after time
is no more, eternity now
happens as happens
to seem to be, then is,

enough to think about a while.

Religion was genius,
A system built on brotherhood and loyalty.
Worship was a good idea,
But it was bad to put it in the hands on man.
The broken emotions of mortal ideals,
Took a good thing and destroyed it.

Everything ends,
Debt collected by the light that gave it life.
Not everyone lives past the grave,
Often forgotten, memory slipping away.
I know for certain I will fade,
For that is how it must be.
Do away with my name and virtue,
Let only the raw words stay.
Yet still, when I do die,
I want a cannonade on evil,
And stars falling from the sky.