Tuesday, January 13, 2009

En Memoriam

Mortality is a disheveled hospital blanket.

Groaning beneath a thin film of unconsciousness, a fitful life battles tirelessly and without peace. For what peace is to be had from IV needles, catheterized genitals, prodding aids with cold fingers and sterile voices? And, that thick smell of packaged gauze, spilt urine covered in ammonia.

The soul is made tangible in the vision of a dying man neglected in a hospital bed. Wounded and defeated, he shrinks from touch, both foreign and familiar. He responds almost imperceptibly to the call of his name, issuing only a shift in position or a more booming and staccato grunt.

With the body's diseased surrender, the soul regains the helm, and, like a masterful puppeteer, rattles the flesh in wordless repose until each jerk, each moan, each writhing gesture mirrors its true state. No more can the masks of reason, fear and pride deny the internal ache. The loss of dignity is the birth of an unimpeded soulful existence.

Fresh air is an expectorant of the soul. A taunting vision of a vast horizon peppered with evergreens and silver clouds lures the final breath from its organic entrapments. Sunlight finds his face as though offering direction. The soul's compass reorients its axis. North becomes skyward. South retreats to the bowels of the earth. East and West are left to the mortals still fit and able to roam on land.

Mortality is an Ethiopian woman wiping feces from your testicles.

If life is fragile, death is a wafer thin teacup balanced precariously in the mouth of a lit canon.

1 comment:

candacemorris said...

i find beauty in the twists, tragedies, and temptations of your journey into whole.

words that once sat inside bringing life and deep red to the roots of your innards now shared and breathed and released not because they were cumbersome to you, but because they are beauty for us.

if we have life, we must use it and say what we mean to say.

you.
me.
how we have plenty to say.

-your humble and willing audience,
an old tree.