A Poem of Death for the Living
by rae Thursday, Nov 19 2015, 10:15am
international / poetry / post

my culture embraces death
and is friends with the living
no life exists without the death
of a previous existence
Serbs know well we were all dead
before we were born but Serbia
is the crossroad of East and West
and Asian blood courses thru
my slavic veins

i walk as in a dream thru life
and dream hard realities
this street i have never seen
yet something is always familiar
tho framed in the strange

from nowhere u appear
shuffling a deck of cards
select one, fanning and offering the deck
but choose wisely
it will determine the tenure and character
of your entire life

i draw a card, the Asian wheel of life
decorated with images of the dead
appropriate to the circumstance and location
of my birth yet those that surround me are familiar
like a re-run of an old movie with the same actors
but different theme and plot

the wise know the Egyptian Book
of the Dead is a guide to life eternal
and the Tibetan book of the Dead
is a guide to another birth/life

the wheel turns, i die daily
leaving the past with funerary attendants
and my failed hopes with undertakers
adorned with hooded falcons
on their shoulders

i look a u intensely and see rivers
of time intricately woven into
a pattern representing the sum
of my experience thru numerous dimensions
and spheres
the course forms a moving spiral
of being from the outermost edge curving back
to the stillness of the centre
where i/u first came into being

u realise i see the implications
of the life i have selected
a faint smile appears on your face
u know we will be together tho
we’ll be strangers when we meet,
live, love and die together
fulfilled and ready for another turn
of the wheel until we merge
in the centre as one unbroken, cosmic
stream of Love

as u begin to fade from view
u turn
ur haunting tho comforting glance
evokes a memory,
i was the dealer who offered you
the deck before,
the card u chose was
Victory