The Fall

    One is not human, one aspires to be human.  We are all animals, living in our dirty, dark lairs.  We create concrete and steel tombs, striving to live, doomed to die.
    Now we stand amongst our creations and watch them crumble.  Ascension sought, we lept to far and now suicides, we all must fall into the oblivion of a crushed race.
    Man is a fallen creature, unable to understand anything but its own mortality.
    See the beast!  How feral the glint in its eyes, the snarl upon its lips.  Hear the screams, the laughter, feel the pain.  See it try to walk, but it can only fall.  It trips and stumbles, hindered by life, until it finally falls, never to rise.  See it try to talk, yet all that comes is screams.  See it try to think, but unable to comprehend, unable to understand, its mortality looming, it can only die...

    Did we ever live in the summer of our life?  Dwelling upon the chill of birth and the spring of childhood, summer is dimming.  Is now the only time that we can see so clear?  That we are always degrading, dying.  The mighty strains of a symphony that heralded a new life are decomposing, fading.  Now comes the autumn of our years, bitter, cold and yet so clear and beautiful.
    By now we can see death, it seems so far away, yet time flies.  Life flies -- life dies.  Breathe in the chill air, smell the wood smoke and the leaves upon the wind.  Exhale.  Watch your breathe blow away in an icy geyser, your mark of life upon the world fading and drifting away.  So somber, a mood befitting the chill.  Ice cold knuckles rapping on the window.  Has your time come?  Now the sun sets behind the trees, long shadows fall.  The shadows creep at your legs and try to hold you, to pull you into their icy embrace.  Will you go?  The sun still shines brightly however, try to hold on as it sinks, spreading warmth as shadows grow.  Enjoy the autumn of your life, summer and spring so long past, the chill setting into your bones.  Breath in again.  Exhale.  Watch the wisps fade away...
 
 
 

Last Days  Mary Oliver  Things are       Changing; things are starting to            spin,snap, fly off into                the blue sleeve of the long                    afternoon.  Oh and ooh  come whistling out of the perished mouth      of the grass, as things  turn soft, boil back      into substance and hue.  As everything,           forgetting its own enchantment, whispers:               I too love oblivion why not is it full                   of second chances.  Now,  hiss the bright curls of the leaves.  Now!      booms the muscle of the wind.

XXIX  e.e. Cummings  in a middle of a room  stands a suicide  sniffing a Paper rose  smiling to self  “somewhere it is spring and sometimes  people  are in real: imagine  somewhere real flowers, but  i can’t imagine real flowers for if i  could, they would somehow  not Be real”  (so he smiles  smiling)”but i will not  everywhere be real to  you in a moment”  The is blond  with small hands  “& everything is easier  than i had guessed everything would  be; even remembring the way who  looked at whom first, anyhow dancing”  (a moon swims out of a cloud  a clock strikes midnight  a finger pulls a trigger  a bird flies into a mirror)

 
 
 

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD  Edgar Allan Poe       Thy soul shall find itself alone       'Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone;       Not one, of all the crowd, to pry       Into thine hour of secrecy.       Be silent in that solitude,          Which is not loneliness- for then       The spirits of the dead, who stood          In life before thee, are again       In death around thee, and their will       Shall overshadow thee; be still.       The night, though clear, shall frown,       And the stars shall not look down       From their high thrones in the Heaven       With light like hope to mortals given,       But their red orbs, without beam,       To thy weariness shall seem       As a burning and a fever       Which would cling to thee for ever.       Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish,       Now are visions ne'er to vanish;       From thy spirit shall they pass       No more, like dew-drop from the grass.       The breeze, the breath of God, is still,       And the mist upon the hill       Shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken,       Is a symbol and a token.       How it hangs upon the trees,       A mystery of mysteries!

THE CONQUEROR WORM  Edgar Allen Poe       Lo! 'tis a gala night          Within the lonesome latter years!       An angel throng, bewinged, bedight          In veils, and drowned in tears,       Sit in a theatre, to see          A play of hopes and fears,       While the orchestra breathes fitfully          The music of the spheres.       Mimes, in the form of God on high,          Mutter and mumble low,       And hither and thither fly-          Mere puppets they, who come and go       At bidding of vast formless things          That shift the scenery to and fro,       Flapping from out their Condor wings          Invisible Woe!       That motley drama- oh, be sure          It shall not be forgot!       With its Phantom chased for evermore,          By a crowd that seize it not,       Through a circle that ever returneth in          To the self-same spot,       And much of Madness, and more of Sin,          And Horror the soul of the plot.       But see, amid the mimic rout          A crawling shape intrude!       A blood-red thing that writhes from out          The scenic solitude!       It writhes!- it writhes!- with mortal pangs          The mimes become its food,       And seraphs sob at vermin fangs          In human gore imbued.       Out- out are the lights- out all!          And, over each quivering form,       The curtain, a funeral pall,          Comes down with the rush of a storm,       While the angels, all pallid and wan,          Uprising, unveiling, affirm       That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"          And its hero the Conqueror Worm.