I cannot escape this knelling cloak of misery,
Which is pain protracted that, if condensed,
Might be contained within the paper’s cut
Or the coffee-table’s stubbing of the mind;
In terror nightly worsened once asleep
At the horrid visages of phantasmal abyss,
Protracted fall, if instanced, would yield a yielding pain,
But, now, my eternal fall is bottomed only by demise,
Whence death an unclasping of manacles
And unfettering, allowing free movement alas,
Whilst body appeareth still in its grave,
Moving only the tears of those miserable mourners,
Miserable in their missing of something never there,
Whom now, in restive inhumation, is rested of torturous mind,
Though, first forever, trembles, though not as the fearful,
Or cold, or timid, or convulsive
But in the worm’s crawl,
Which so thus creates where devours,
Admiring me in my feeding of the earth,
A body, while living, was dead,
Now alive in purpose and movement,
Circulating through all mundanity,
Respired by universal winds,
And contained within the marrow
Of all livelier things,
Deceased only in its no longer being ceased,
A body thus while minded, while inhabited
By a wretched, wrenching animation
Governed by fear and pain and subsistence,
Feeding upon fodder more innutritious than the food of my body
If fed to another,
Who converts the energy to harmonious interaction,
Whereby, in my living, the same energy merely fueled
A terrible, prolonged recrudescence,
A happening and rehappening, as the eyes’ shutter,
Of my mind’s evisceration,
Tormented forever, though someday no more,
Of life’s living futility,
And the beneficence finally offered upon death.

-Poyetikos