Death

Death

A poem by Walker Andreasen

 

Something cold, something thin.

Something icy pricked my skin.

The back of my neck I felt a hand,

In my ear whispered words, a strand

Of lyrics sweet to the soul.

One by one the words they flowed,

From my head to my toes.

"Sweet is the hour of your despair,

Yet your thoughts tremble in the air.

Your life has brought you quite the scare,

Your decisions, actions have brought you here.

Please now ponder if you dare,

All the reasons you have cared."

My mind it raced with thoughts of past.

Raced and raced, twisted fast.

Sweat so cold against flesh so hot,

 I tried and tried but thought not.

My heart beat hard against its cage,

My thoughts they were, in a rage.

"Come on now think, it's just a start,

Your mind hasn't raced very far.

You can do better, you know you can,

Would it be better if you ran?"

The voices idea seemed so sweet,

But for I was glued to my seat.

My muscles taught, I tried and fought.

But bound by something, I knew not,

Then the ice ran down my spine,

Then the memories that were not mine.

"Just for you," the whisper said,

"A memory for you from the dead.

You remember very well, though buried deep,

This thought you tried not to keep."

I knew what it was getting at,

My mind yelled RUN! But yet I sat.

Transfixed and scared,

The voice, it said, didn't care

How scared I was, how I wanted to go

It needed to know.

"What happened here?" Its simple question,

A question that I could not answer.

I felt the ice run though my skull,

It was in my mind, it made it full.

I didn't have to speak, for now I was meek

It knew everything yet still its voice,

Pierced my soul, I hadn't a choice.

It asked repeatedly, and yet so kindly,

"And what have we here? To walk so blindly."

I felt its presence draw from my mind and my spine,

From my persons until all I felt

Was its hand on my neck. My heart had melt'd

From the fear of its presence,

I had never known such a menace.

"Yet here you sit, with sweat so iced.

Did you think love was priced?

Come with me now, you are free.

Come with me now and you can see."

I saw it then, an apparition.

I took its hand; that was its mission.

For a while I stood from above and watched below,

My body on the ground, so low.

My friend of new, himself clothed in robes

Of black. His head was hooded, his face not shown.

In hand a scepter, long and curved,

Death: a master we all must serve.

He pointed, I looked and saw my friends,

My family, their weeping had no end.

I said goodbye and turned,

For a new adventure I had yearned.