Dying a Death

A loss of consciousness, that’s what it is.
A short woozy spell and then out for good.
That’s, out for ever, never more to live.
No function, so nothing more understood.

Not being. Not in this world anymore.
Inanimate, and not of consequence.
Extinct. May as well be a dinosaur.
Moment of truth, wherein no more pretence.

Communication goes without saying.
Could say, sort of intense with the absence.
Not bear thinking about. Brain not staying.
In all senses, will not make any sense.

Just will get woozy and lose all control.
No awareness then of what’s to unfold.

A Godhead. Comes from thinking a Godhead,
any ending-of-life disappointment.
A God, surely, cannot simply be dead.
A God must have the power to prevent.

Here, mostly, and up ahead, have the view
that ‘I’ am an omnipotent presence.
On the sickbed, shock to have to eschew
the ‘powerful’ delusion, in essence.

Come to that realisation, and more.
That despite ‘God-like’, have left things undone.
Have not wondered enough what life is for.
Not given enough, so that ‘good’ would come.

Disappoints at the end, that at the end.
The Godhead only as still statue, then.

Read out my poem, ‘The Point of Living’.
Its end I consider ambiguous.
My view on ‘life’s meaning’ delivering.
Not a general, specific, purpose.

Maintain, point of living is to go on.
Continue with its possibilities.
All of the time, up to oblivion.
Will be individual imperatives,

at times, or central to a person’s life.
This, then, is other than just ‘going on’.
‘Building a castle on sand’, whilst alive,
poem says. That, though, not bad a life-song.

Hearer said, “third choice; let go, stop trying”.
“That”, I responded, “the point of dying”.

I am back to the realisation
of how sudden, how abrupt, my ending.
Death comes with rapid acceleration.
Its fixed, dark, totality descending.

A last moment alive. The next, then, dead.
No return, replacing that omission.
Being, … me …, no longer being instead.
The call, the cause’s fateful decision.

There it is. There I am, suddenly gone.
Upon me, so shockingly abruptly.
Time to think, as happens, do not get long.
My death, completion of my destiny.

To death, from my birth, and all in between,
in a heartbeat, from ‘I am’ to ‘has been’.

It is a horrible void, where absence.
It is nothing to do with anything.
No sense. They’ll be no sense. Will make no sense.
No way to do any deciphering.

Just a void impossible to avoid.
I was born to do this; born to be there.
All of my physicality destroyed.
For all intent and purpose, disappear.

A void I believe to be horrible.
Nothing I think to give encouragement.
Nowhere to go? Well, that’s rhetorical.
Non-existence, then, the total extent.

No chance in the void. Completely empty.
And I won’t be there. That, my destiny.

The death of everybody will be.
It is an inevitability.
It will come to you. It will come to me.
Common, but for each, exclusivity.

The death of a loved one will cause to grieve.
With more than a body can take, it seem.
Assumptions may well helpfully deceive.
Memories restore as a living dream.

The death of me, realise will happen.
A fact. Cannot be thought of as fiction.
Know so, alive, but plenty distraction.
Yet end of my time comes, sure prediction.

I will lose lucidity; all of me.
Not easier that everybody.

Is it logical that I defy death?
Believe that it simply will not happen?
I know that I will not, I must confess.
All alive die, in whatever fashion.

So, be my fate too, I have to conclude.
My heart stop beating and last gasp taken.
From its certainty, death, me not exclude.
Be inanimate at my cremation.

Yet, I think I am special. Am special
as a here and now individual.
Prompts illusion that have the wherewithal
to continue via some miracle.

But reason, knowledge and logic, say no.
When time of my life’s up, I have to go.

Down among the dead men and dead women,
the utter silence as nothing is said.
Cannot tell, who hero and who villain.
All in same category … dead … instead.

Maybe acknowledge with some modest stone,
their crumbling bones; their dissolved skeleton.
Maybe remembered if was not alone
in life. Only if remains anyone

to think of. Down there, no brains to think of.
All gone, that of any relevance here.
That is what it means to be the end of.
Up here, followed by down there, disappear.

It is for nothing, then, my reasoning,
down among the dead men and dead women.

“Harry has died”, I hear it being said.
Although won’t hear it. Won’t hear anything.
Just anticipate that it said when dead.
Will be so, so I’m not imagining.

There will be conversations; some phone calls.
Some, express sadness; some, condolences.
My face, or moment with me, may recall.
May ask the cause, to confirm how it is.

I am alive as I am writing this.
If my works perused, that me as I was.
Like the old photographs that still exist.
Remembered as the person then, because

acknowledged as a fact, that which was said,
“Harry has died. Yes, him. Harry is dead”.

I am not the world. I am not a God.
Will be little impact, my leaving have.
A momentary acknowledging nod,
some redistribution of assets had,

then, the world without me, know nothing of.
Even of familiar things, unaware.
And lots of others’, great or lesser Gods,
carrying on, no matter I’m not there.

I thought the earth I trod was at my feet.
And God given, the power I possessed.
But, struggle with death; eventual defeat
And from all I know as mine, dispossessed.

Cut cleanly from me, as if with cleaver.
Eternity, then. I’m not that, either.