Archive
07/28/08 - (2)
Death As a Way of Life Arguably, admittedly, I have an obsession with death. OK, now it's finally out. So much for "don't ask, don't tell." The truth is moot.
You could, conceivably, classify my fascination as a fixation, A perverse preoccupation with demise, if you choose. I suggest you see it as a rite of passage
Old age undertakes, of its own volition, By virtue of living long enough to be able to look back Without flinching, suffering panic attacks,
As a diehard acrophobiac might be able to look down While walking a steel girder of a skyscraper Reaching its eighty-fifth story, above Manhattan,
Asking himself what possibly possessed him To step out on life's unforgiving edge, On a lark, a whim, daring death to blow him off...
Undertakes when the end of life is a given, A foregone conclusion to a nonrecurring delusion, An immutable testament to mutability, decease, decay.
I myself, as a voice of one, at most or at least, Decline to accept the end of me, anyway, If not Faulknerian man, humanity at large, the planet —
Indeed I do. I will not only endure and prevail Because I have a puny, inexhaustible voice But because I have a spirit, a soul, capable of chutzpah,
A Diasporan capacity to rise above tsuris, Anti-Semitic, Hitlerian, Übermenschen hubris That would consign my pariah's heritage to the ovens,
My faculty for compassion, pity, sacrifice, endurance To Madjanek, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau-Buna — Indeed, I will. I'm immortal.
So, naturally, you ask about my obsession with death. What more can I say? I'll tell you. I worship it.
Since oppression is all I've ever known, I find that death is an abiding, comforting presence. How otherwise could I endure life's infinite atrocities?
07/28/08 - (2)
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