If Not The Last, Yet This Will Be, One Of The Last Poems I'll Ever Write Poem by Chris G. Vaillancourt

If not the last, yet this will be,
one of the last poems I'll ever write.
Sobering thought.
Days to come, not long from now,
these hands will no longer type.
This mind shall cease to create.

I wore peace signs on my Levi jacket.
I recall this so vividly.
Wrote angry words,
wrote loving words.
Always the words,
the phrases that
flashed like alarms
inside my thoughts.

They meant so much to me.
They mean so much to me.

One day soon, these
words will evaporate.
Be no more.
Be forgotten.

I wore bell-bottom jeans,
when I was a teenager.
Proudly arrogant
as only a young man can be.
Grew and aged, and still wrote.
Till I got to today.

This day. This possibly last poem.

Cry if you must,
if that is your way.
I've cried too.
Internally.
Alone.
Frustrated at the
finality of dying.

'How dare they
pronounce this upon me! '
I loudly suggest.
Knowing 'they'
only confirmed what
my body already knew.

These may be the final vowels
I will string together?
What of this life-time
of writing will remain?
A few scattered books,
a magazine or two.
Will I have
faithfully communicated
what I've wanted to say?

It doesn't really matter,
I suppose.
I am only one voice
surrounded
by billions of others.

Like dust on a table,
I'll be wiped away.
Put in a closet.
Door locked.
No more words
to be said.

These are really all I have had
to define and label as my own.

Now they are dropping
their power. Escaping
like a final breath.

Soon I will take that final breath.
No more poetry to be written.