Life waits for no one
She continues with or without you -
Your breath stops
Your heart slowly counts
D
O
W
N
its final thumps
Ba-dum
Ba-dum
Baaaduummmm-----------

There are billions more
The human species goes on
Despite pain
Despite sorrow
Despite wars
Despite famine
Despite pestilence...
Despite epidemic, pandemic, pandemonium
Despite generational curses which keep souls bound
By demons seen,
Unseen

Unfathomable strongholds
Winding around and around
Bodies, minds
Singular, plural
Piercing hearts like poisoned arrows

Crippling, belittling, degrading
Decaying the matter,
The mass,
The weight,
The energy of a YOU -
Transforming this SELF and paralyzing the entirety of what you consider to be
LIFE.
A heap of bone and blood.
Worm food.

And yet! You, deceased, does not equal discontinuation of
LIFE - she goes on.
La la la la life goes on...
And her counterpart,
her archnemesis,
Death, oh dark, handsome angel he is,
Waits for no one.

You hate the thought of him
Wrapping his wings around your being,
Carting you off, away,
From the continuation of life...
Sweet, beautifully-traumatic life.

You run from him,
Try to buy more days,
Hours, minutes, seconds,
Knowing he has no need,
Nor want,
For your money,
Possessions,
Obsessions.
Your futile words,
Your wasted breath...
He comes. You lose.
Game Over.

I've felt his sting,
His breath, hot on my neck,
His fingertips brushing against my goose-pimpled skin...
His victory over me seemingly imminent.
Yet he flew away,
Backwards, his red eyes glaring at me as he left.

I knew he would return.
And he did.
Not once, twice,
So many, many times...
I've long lost count of his innumerable visits -

To my bedside,
My varied locations...
Under a wagon,
In a bathtub,
In the deep water beneath the crumbling bridge,
In that dark back bedroom,
In that cold, black alley inside a truck with no gasoline and no heat,
In a stranger's bed, warm hands clutching my arm, injecting me with his venom...
On a hospital gurney, my chest feeling compressed by blue-gloved hands,
My mouth tasting blackness...

He comes.
But he leaves.

Keeping me ever on my toes,
My senses heightened,
Paranoia overwhelming.
Constantly scanning, looking for a glimpse of his shadow,
Just waiting for his
Final Arrival.

Yet there is a still, small voice...

I hear whispers of hope,
A child's voice in the night
Calling out for me,
Ushering me to my feet

"Come and find me
I am here
Can you hear me,
See me,
Feel me... drawing you close?"

I gasp,
Shudder under the weight of the world bearing down...
So heavy that my feet imprint the earth like Tyrannosaurus Rex footprints,
Fossilized in stone

That child, that man, that Eternity...
Life goes on, with, or without, ME.

I put one foot in front of the other,
Hands outstretched,
Grasping at every last particle of light


© tourniquette