I do wish I would lie
But I’m sure I’m here to die
Luck has lucked out, smart fate
Love, fear, all old mates
Have come together to make this visit
Needed, though I’d rather not live it
Is what I fear the fact of death
Or the idea of death?
Becoming No Thing, no self, gone
Expunged, lost, dust on a lawn
Yet nothingness not quickly attained
My insurance card is stained
Said coverage to my name cannot belong
Should I leap, run out, burst into song?
But jerkily the numbers curl up to match
I’m certified, caught, plus add this catch
There are millions of bits that can go wrong
Amassing and merging as life grows long
My brain can fail a billion ways
My cells turn cancerous in less than a day
Will they truly discover what’s wrong with me
Or need a new lifetime to search out and see?
They still don’t know what’s wrong
My melody weakens like hack country songs
I’ve already enjoyed dozens of tests
Claim I must stay to sample the rest
If I survive them will I then survive?
For a dark, silent moment I sense hope revive
My new home’s like the cathedrals of old
Sky topping naves, spires bright bold
Working full pace to cancel reality
Banking to profit on this simple duality –
Life or death, God or chaos, yes or no
All sprinting together to patch up a show
The species survives. We don’t
Immortality can’t, won’t
On earth as in heaven
We humor ourselves with bright lights to leaven
The unpalatable fact
We’re not coming back
Like movie stars grunting “we’re going in”
I feel a failed hero while stuffed in a bin
The bodyscan reports I’m not heartless
The brain MRI that I’m boring and artless
They can’t find the reason I’m ill and yet here
Is it time to just give up and buy me a seer?
Yet faintly my idea of death starts to die
Though the chill down my neck sticks and lies
My shrunken self is sorry scared
All my tight senses sharply aware
Yet I’m only here through others
The long line of sisters and mothers
Near four billion years to get to this place
Formed from stars, comets, plague wars to race
Through the long fields and seas of father earth
That patched microcosm of curses and hearths
We come and go but It will keep going
Past our mistakes, past all our knowing
The planet is hived with grand intelligences
Even if its masters have lost all their senses
Past the car parks and wards where I have lain
The rivers and mountains will surely remain