It’s not the salt in the tear that burns.
It’s not the greyness, nor the night or
utterly opaque mist that clouds judgement.
Maybe it’s the ripple in the muddy lakes
that catches your eye, or the snap of
something under pressure behind you
making you turn. No, sorry, just another
rat or crow, breaking twigs indifferently.
Monotonous conversations sucking away
the day like the vultures who hold them,
eating up the time as if it will boost their own.
Time is all man has. Money, war, petty
grievances that start up a hundred years’
divide like a chasm appeasement falls
into instead of bridging the gap: temporary
things. Well, temporary for all that you’ll
ever know. We’ve got something in common,
something many people shy from or make
the subject of cardinal sin to even
mention. You’re going to die. I’m going
to die. Politicians, bankers, kings, slaves,
actors and clergymen are all going to meet
their fate one day. Is it so bad, really?
We walk through the streets of our world
touching as little as we can so we don’t bother
the pushers and shovers and the end of the
road is clouded just a little more than the
intervals. It’s all the same, it uses the same
bricks for every section of wall, and every
drain made by the same factory; the only
difference is where there’s mould between
the mortar and the shit stamped into the road.
Yet still the martyr’s last chorus is a cry of fear.
It’s a cry resounding the fact that after death
we get a sermon if we’re lucky saying how
good we were by people who don’t care and
a stamp certifying you as deceased on fifty
versions of your file from countries whose
name you can’t pronounce who have monitored
your life from behind a one-way screen, judging
you for what you did or didn’t do, yet forgetting
your name as soon as they avert their tired eyes.
The suffocating darkness beyond the thin veil,
so easily broken by a stray bullet or a knife edge
meant for someone else’s back; is that what
we fear most? Or is it the eternal swinging of the
pendulum ticking away the seconds like boxes on
the page of ‘One Thousand And One Things
You Should Do Before You Die’, copyright 2002
Someone Just Like You.
So don’t cry about dying, it’s not the tear that
burns but the knowledge you can’t escape.
Because that is the martyr’s last chorus, last
dance, last serenade seen through blurred
streaming eyes: we’re all afraid at the last second.
