230913 - Death

To be alive. It’s the only point my mind keeps coming back to these last few weeks. I feel death standing on the other shoulder; silent, calm, patient. To say that he is waiting would be to miss the mark - he, more than most, understands the journey. Yet, there he is. Unflinching. We are becoming friends, he and I. His scythe, nowadays not only his own great companion. Remorselessly, equipped with the sharpness reserved for the heavens, I cut that which has become fit to die. Death brings nothing if not freedom; freedom proper. The lightness of knowing the relativity of all your weight. That in the end, none of it really matters. To be alive - that is all that really is. And I feel it now, acutely. Every breath, every step. Every time I look in her eyes or hunger for her lips. All of it is accompanied by his cold breath down my neck. Don’t forget, his icy demeanor says. The coolness makes my fire burn harder, longer, warmer. It makes me want to shout his message from the rooftops, but I know only too well that there wouldn’t be anyone to hear it. What can I say that hasn’t been said already? How can I penetrate the reserved intellect of the man who thinks he knows to tease out that which he’s long forgotten; the fire in his heart? Sometimes I think only the poet understands me - whatever his expression might be. The man of art, he who’s eyes burn with the ferocity of that same exploding star we both glimpsed that day so long ago. Imprinted under the same night sky - imbued with that sweet essence. Now all of life is an invitation to taste, to drink as much as we possibly can before we’re dragged into a dark cellar again. So what is there left to do but to dance, to sing, to write, to feel, to live, to love? All in dedication to that eternal finality. Knowing that tomorrow, maybe I won’t. That’s why I live. That’s why I love. That’s why I write - to have touched a single soul with my words. To have encouraged a smile, a laugh, a deeper shade of feeling. To resonate within the hearts of a single, of many - to a man there could be an honor no greater.