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The Land of the Dead
by ryall Wednesday, Jul 2 2014, 12:21pm
international / poetry / post

.

everyone is busy
being dead
in the land of the dead,
not unusual, is it?

strictly speaking
(something i’ve never done
in my life)
it is a misnomer
to identify this realm
as a land,
it is more like a sphere
within a sphere,
a realm no less real
than this dimension

the dead engage
in all manner of activities,
disputation,
jealousies and war
much like we do
in the land of the living
-- i am referring to
the dead we once knew
as the living --

do not speak ill
of the living as they were
once dead
they may come with
a one-way ticket
to the land of the dead

do not speak ill
of the dead as they
are constantly searching
for a convenient
body to inhabit,
hence the adage

the dead are closer
than you think
they are immediate --
the necessity of soul exchange
between the spheres
demands it --

souls flow constantly
in either direction
each replenishing
the population
of the other

there is never
a lack of souls in
either sphere

i am haunted tonight
the dead are confused
they appear asking questions,
which are easily answered,
happy to receive instruction
the other dead somehow realise
that useful information is available
and flock to my quarters,
which are now a throng
of jostling souls

the wind sweeps through
poppy fields,
marshes and
across searing dunes --
bleached human bones
protrude from shifting
sands that constantly
ripple onward
reclaiming lushness,
replacing it with silica,
this was once a war zone
a fertile field of the dead

i have been blessed,
to be reborn in Oz
home of the Dreamtime
where life and death
merge happily
to form a single realm,
a place of haunted beauty,
living myths and
non-linear time
that flows back and
forth like tidal waters;
time here rolls in on itself
it carries all there was, is
and will be

i see the dead burying the living,
and the living burying
everything;
it does not augur well;
soft whispering and rustling
frame a chorus of regret
and tragedy
neither the living
nor the dead were
able to resist the senseless
cycle of living and dying
when everlasting/undying was an
ever-present option

the tolling of a bell
is barely discernible
in the distance