How tender the flesh is;
With such ease
Does it fall from the bone.
I wonder how it is
That I'm in this state -
Have I been stewed,
But somehow not died?
Am I decomposing,
Despite being alive?
Is this skin just a costume;
Am I what lies beneath?
Will somebody tell me
How deep I must go
For the body to no longer be body,
For the body to become the soul?
Am I the flesh, the brain,
The light within my eyes?
Without this body, am I still something?
Does the spirit need it to survive?
Am I just my heartbeat,
The flowing of my blood?
Am I just my thoughts and feelings?
Or the creation of some god above?
As the body crumbles,
I wonder what I truly am -
All I know is that a god may be a man,
But no man can be a god:
We would not design our bodies
To decay, we would not begin to wither
With age. What fool, what god,
What villain
Failed to tell mankind what they truly are.
Even men are not that cruel -
We create an object and give it a name,
A noun from which
We understand an item entirely:
Think of a pen, perhaps,
And you will know
It is a writing implement made
From plastic that dispenses ink.
A man has no such liberty -
Is he the plastic; is he the ink?
Is he both, does one rely upon the other
And cease to have meaning
When one no longer exists?
A pen without ink is still a pen;
Ink without the plastic is just ink.
What is a soul without a body,
Or a body without a soul?
The cruelty is that we shall never know,
Not until it's too late.
I pity the believer whose soul becomes
Nothingness;
I weep for the atheist who is denied entry
To those fabled pearly gates.
I long to know what I am,
Where I'll go -
Is this rotting flesh due to become
Home to a brood of maggots?
Is this soul set to fade into oblivion,
Or remain someplace else forevermore?
Am I the body, or am I the soul?
Is the flesh just a cloak
Over what lies below?
Am I my consciousness,
Or just the capacity of this body to breathe?
Can I be both, or neither -
I wish somebody had told me,
Or, at the very least, asked me
Which I wanted to be.
YOU ARE READING
Refraction.
PoetrySo many aspects, colours and themes make up our experiences. Truly, is anything entirely good or entirely bad? Upon weighing up the positives and negatives of the past, do we not admit that even tragedy is- in a twisted sort of way- advantageous? O...
