Scientists say that everyone dies,
Having a set lifespan,
With the only possible exception being
Some unique jellyfish
Who regenerate like Doctor Who.

Yet religious folk claim
We will have eternal life
So long as we believe
In Their God (whoever).

So who can we believe?
Are any of them right
At all?

Is death the same for all?
The same for a man or woman
As for a blade of grass or withering rose?
The same for all men and women?
For humans and animals alike?

Have we been told the truth
About this and other matters?
The questions go on:
Conundrums whirling around our minds
As we inwardly crave Salvation.

All we have now,
To cling on to,
Is good old Hope.
Faith has no certainty
For me.
I never kidded myself
About that.
There’s only Hope, Hope,
Hope.

Paul Butters

© PB 10\5\2021.

the asteroid hit the earth so long ago that
                                                             i do not remember a time before.  
(the bones of dinosaurs do not remember a time before they were
petrified into brittle and fragile memories; the moon does not recall
who she was before she got stuck in the earth’s orbit; uranus knows
nothing of how he came to spin on his side.)

you could stick your hand through
any of the gas giants and find
                                                          your whole body
                                                           slidi­ng through.  
this same theory can be applied to my skin.  i have very little gravity,
or at least it feels that way most days.

maybe it depends on how you look at it:
one way is perfect, and the other all wrong.  the woman in the casket could either be sleeping or dead.  she could either be a stranger or my mother.  the head or the tail.  the light or the dark.  the two sides of the moon.  the comet striking through the night sky.  the interdimensional toll could refuse to let you through.  the cult could accept or deny your entry request.  there is one and there is the other.  the upside down.  the rightside up.  the parallel universe.  the evil twin.  it’s fresh and then it’s rotten.  this could either hurt a lot or a little.  it depends on how much you let in: how willing you are to bend to the emotional blow.

science says that the human body tends to
                                                            forget physical pain as a survival tactic.
but science says jack **** about emotional pain.

so am i living?  or am i just existing?
     the difference is six feet deep.

I'm keeping the last drop in the drawer
Beside me inside my bedside table
Where once both of our things littered
Atop that cheap Ikea wrongly assembled
Square that posed as a treasure chest
And doubled as dining table and trash can

The last drop of romantic feelings
That weren't dead on impact upon
The drunken uselessly endless aggressive
Words spat sitting at the kitchen table
Where I was fighting to be numb
And you were fighting to be loved

When I'm healthy enough to gear out of
Autopilot and back into attempting to try
Accepting the rush of human experience
I can put that drop under microscope
And get experimental with how to love
Without purposely trying to drown myself

~
The disruptor,
whether digital or analog,
strikes the bell,

bioengineered automaton
—a manufactured life form
given little agency or dimension,

mnemonic to the finitude of life,
and subtle muddling of humankind's
supposed moral transcendence.
~

Government regulators attempted to **** me
God's angels are the people that saved me
They created the problem buy giving the Dr the key
Escapades that spiralled like a birch tree
To suppress confessions and evidence
People were given unwanted medicine
Some ran but caught by the magnet resonance
Others 6 feet under, blessed by a church eminence
God help! Sadists and cannibals eat patients
Colluding in auditory nerves in acoustic vibrations
They are the nations NHS saviours
When people suffer they have secret celebrations
Looking for the innocent soul
Destroying with false reports and a troll
Exploiting every loophole
Services and public on a sly payroll
Pseudo science disease is a abomination
That of mental illness to the nation
That has brain washed the population
Truth will singe psychiatry to decimation

They call me Mr.Cadaver
Dead,yet living in hospitals
And schools where they teach how to become doctors
Oh!Doctors My only true lover

I died of a natural disease
You know,the one where you constantly sneeze
Too poor to be buried
Too poor to be burned
So I was embalmed
In certain chemicals
Formaldehyde,then frozen
And in this form turned

It wasn't easy at first
Young eyes looking at me suspiciously
The weak-hearted watching disgustedly
But as time(I have much of it)
Went by I got used to it

I was dissected by stainless steel
So that they could learn how to heal
These various tissues,body parts well
I knew my worth when departed

I was a precise model
Of a living person
With my help
So many learnt

Basic human anatomy
Which vein goes where
Where lies the spleen
So whenever you are on the hospital bed
Remember
My death gave another life to thee

They sell me for many a dollar
To the blue-eyed scholar
And I will become his loyal friend
I may look creepy
But that's just because I'm dead

The teacher points to various places
On me , sometimes I feel a little ticklish
But I a satisfied by the curious eyes
Who are learning about me for your benefit


And when the session expires
My second life,it must retire
But they extract my bones
Put the skeletal frame in a museum
Or break it into pieces
And give it to students of various fields
The dentists want the cranium
I'm bloodless
Anatomy's life bood

So bow down to me
Ye first year students
I taught Da Vinci how to draw a man
Taught Michaelangelo how to sculpt
From Ancient Greece to modern medicine
My death has given life to many humans