Looking up at a spread-eagled mass
Of milky way:
This mother fucking crazy, intergalactic expanse of
Impossible to comprehend stretch of stars,
That explodes like shattered diamonds
Throughout the sky.
I’m wondering what life makes of me,
And how short it is,
And how hard it is,
And how much in awe I am of
Everything I smell, hear, taste and see
And most of all touch,
Because I swear I cannot touch enough
Of everything life has to offer
And I cannot, communicate
How much
I want to tell everyone I love
That death and growing up
Must surely be a fake news bluffer,
Because what about eternity?
Even though I know
That for as long as time ticks
My fastest words
Will still never be fast enough
To outwit
The march of
The final tock’s inevitability,
Which to me is even less
Easy to understand
Than the unfathomability
Of the stars
That stretch above.
And those I don’t love?
I want to tell them that I mostly feel guilty -
Because we’re all in this melting pot
Together,
Awkwardly
Trying to come to terms
With something that we’ll surely never
Comprehend,
And whilst we proudly
Defend our precious corners,
And cling to whatever things we find that
Give us comfort
And whatever gods we chose
To numbly drug us;
Make us the centre of our own
Narcissistically enraged universes,
The brutal fact always emerges
Eventually:
The universe, along with time
Will one day,
For all of us,
Continue on its merry way,
Regardless of who is left here to see.
And no,
I’m not saying all of this
Because I’m a hippy,
There’s no weed that can compete
With the experience of disease –
And not just in the physical context
Of being literally brought down
Onto my knees
But in the vital sense,
Of existing,
Within the profound mess that
Comes with the stress of
The affliction of existential
Disease:
An un-ease;
Because the sands of time
Stop for no man
And the dice of the gods
Is a game of chance
And I’m older now
And my kids are grown taller than me,
And their skin
Shines
Whilst my own
Is criss-crossed with
Frown lines,
And what time remains is
Marred anyway by the
Black spot,
Of a heart that beats too fast
And feels too much,
And surely cannot last
That long, within the constant drive
That constantly causes
My body to
Retaliate against
Any bit of me it finds that thrives…
But worse than that,
I fear for the future
I cannot see:
The one in which my kids
I hope will continue to
Live and breathe
With health and wealth
And everything else:
That adds up to that state that is
‘Being happy.’
But for now,
I’m here:
Alive,
A tiny blip within this
Unknowable state
That we call life,
That blesses and curses
And confounds and confuses
And makes me laugh out loud
Then pound
My chest
And cry,
Then, in the next breath
Sing glory hallelujahs
To a sky that’s
Sprinkled with diamonds;
The same sky
That sat above me
When I was tiny
And will still be there
In all its fury
When I’m dead and gone,
Because the sky always
Carries on -
No matter what other matter
Lives and dies and
Returns back to where it belongs,
And isn’t that a comfort?
Because in the end,
When all is said and done
And the final curtain closes,
That sense of awe -
Doesn’t it make everything
Just that little bit less
Hopeless?
Just that little bit more
Worth fighting for?
And can awe therefore
Become something
That we can all
Believe in?
A promise
That can keep us hoping,
Because awe inspires
The inspiration
That puts the beat
Back into the heart’s beating:
And awe is something too that
Never dies,
And when I look up,
I realise that within the awe
I feel for this heady mass
Of star crazed sky,
I too will always be alive.
7 September 2018.