This Earth, Last Night's Bed

- This Earth, Last Night’s Bed-
by Keaton Foster


I’m dead
This earth
Last night’s bed
I slept well
Peaceful and true
Never again
Will I awaken
Mortal no more
My soul
Has gone home
My skin and bones
Set to decompose
My words
Those that remain
Lies upon the page
Fools will find them
Savages will read them
Few will obey them
They are the sum
The point of the blade
The edge of the knife
The antithesis of why
I was ever here
Existence
A torturous endowment
Given through grace
Taken away through fate
Fate cannot allow itself
To ever be denied
I took my own life
It was both my time
And my right
Thou shalt not kill
Hypocrisy in spades
Never a man of faith
I feared God more
When I was alive
Now
I fear nothing at all
I’m here
Within silence
I’m here
Within oblivion
The ether extends beyond
The shambles of existence
The wilderness of who we are
Is pale in comparison
To the expansive vacancy
That I now find myself in
This earth
Last night’s bed
I slept good
Peaceful and true
Never again
Will I awaken
I am indeed dead
The price for
Having ever lived
I know those who
Came upon my corpse
Dangling
From the shortest rope
Were not shocked
They cut me down
Said a kind prayer
Prepared my body
With gentle regard
They called in a priest
His kind lies echoed
I heard each one
Long after
They were said
When they were done
Everyone said Amen
Almost as if they
Themselves were
Somehow at ease
This earth
Last night’s bed
I’m sure you’re asking
Pondering
Maybe avidly yawning
How could such
Poignant words
Have been penned
Written before death
Suggestible at best
How could this man
This poet with no hope
Have known what was next
Before he was even there
How could have he had
Such a supercilious idea
And then shared it
Before he defied God’s tenant
And hung himself until dead
How could this all be as it is
Simple
It’s not…

This Earth, Last Night’s Bed
Written by Keaton Foster Copyright © 2014.