Character Sketches of My Future

A poem about how I've imagined my death throughout my life.

For a guy who thinks so much about death

you'd think I had cancer

or a good reason to kill myself

or a really good reason to not kill myself

Death to me is a shapeshifter

moving around in the shadows

transforming like a piece of art

statues twitching in the dark

When I am alive and okay with being alive

it appears to me as a void

black and endless I cannot accept

the reality so I try to fill it

like a gas fills up any container it occupies

but there is just not enough of me

to make something out of nothing

and so I become one with the darkness

But in those hours death shines

like a bright white room with a lamp and a sofa

so inviting and comfortable I forget

why I had an appointment there in the first place

until the lights flicker

and the paint chips off the walls

Dont you remember ben? You're here

because this is where you belong

your friends staged an intervention

for a fool of a man who thought

that the world was his stage

the world is a parking spot with an expired meter

You are a rat on a ship

at best a nuisance and at worst a disease

you're only alive because nobody could be bothered

to come looking for you

and in that moment death

becomes the ocean pulling down

the boat, myself, and everyone I love

into a sick vortex of intrusive thoughts

this ship wasn't meant to sail

thats why they kept it in a bottle

the painting of the sea on the wall

hanging in the stairwell since you could remember

that is death

black holes dont scare me

because at least I can lose myself

in the dark recesses of space

it is the sea that terrifies me

because the sea is infinite in its mystery

and absolute in its decision

It is certain