Life And Death Poem by Lonnie Hicks

Life and Death sought to converse
Life offering:

“You death
impose upon me
Cruel Ironies
wasting my years
laboring under
your Cleverest Illusion
that you were so distant
so distant so as not to exist;
the Illusions Youth Caress
an illusion of no endings
only Happily Ever Afters.

The Old now
Bereft
come
to suspect there is no
happy ever after
what so ever
and may invent
a substitute
calling it Religion.



Death said:

'Yes Life
I have noticed this as well
the inventing
of an Ever After
calling it Heaven
or such;
Being with God
its Signal Aspect
being
that I Death
am banned
from the premises
where I am totally
denied.
This I perceive
is its only purpose-
to deny me my due-
sacrificed to Humankind’s
pitiful insistence
that Humankind be allowed
to live forever
and ever after
cheating me
of my just due.

It is the denial of the yin and yang
the wave without the trough
the music without the silences.
Beginnings without Endings.

“But surely you understand
Life, ”
Death said
“there is no you-Life
without my being
present;
no beginning is conceivable
without me-its ending.

I represent all endings
Death said
drawing himself
up to his full height
finally saying;

“What fairy tales
you mortals weave
as you angrily
dismount
your unicorn.

Life said:

“Ah me thinks
you prove too much
Death
in your premise
because contrarily
you Death
have no meaning
or course
without me Life.

Therefore
you must conclude
that under the skin
we are brothers;
no?

And just perhaps
of we two
you Death
are the
Grandest Illusion
of all
depending upon
ones philosophy
ones illusion of You
or one's Illusion of Me.'