Heaven II

Rarity in horror of the light

I’m wanted for a cause

The harshness of the sharpened metal bite

Children’s eyes are shaped like saws

You’re a precious little soldier of the fight

I memorise the doors

And running through the cold streets, taking flight

I realise my flaws



I will not try to fail again

I will not die for failing friends

It is not mine to face the end

I must not venture there

I see my body twist and bend

I see it oddly buck the trend

The angels cruelly comprehend

I feel I’m going there

I know what the lines portend

I cannot even fathom when

The angels cruelly comprehend



I feel I’m going there

"No, It Requires Revolt!"

If you have ever been low, perhaps very, very low, you will have been told that death is not the answer. Death, they will have told you, is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. You may even have been told that dying before your appointed hour is selfish.

But first we’ll talk about life. The truth is that life is a very little thing. Life is a lifeforms’ thing. Some of us long for a maternal Earth, some for a vengeful God, but the world we live in is not a lifeform. We are alive, but we are not of life. Our substrate is impartial and indifferent. The matters of lifeforms don’t distort the field that they lie in. Life does not matter to the universe.

Now for death. You can take life to be heart death, brainstem death, or some nebulous soul death, however you please. You may even have a personal death pinned to some event in your life lying far away from the point of the end of gross life. It does not matter. Like life, death is a very little thing. Death is a tiny drop in a bucket the size of the ocean. The universe looks down on death with unseeing eyes. To the universe, life and death, the all-important existential currency of lifeforms, are tiny.

Life and death are equals in the grand scheme of things, equal pale blue dots. The life and death on a single planet must be a homeopathic preparation of change. The life and death of a single person like you is a motion blur artefact. To live with peace, we must realize that life and death stand shoulder to shoulder. If you are not afraid of death, then there is no reason to be afraid of life. The arc of life and death is ignored by the universe, and it is tempting always to take up its cause and carry its rebellious banner, reading, “I am all-important”. But better to make peace with the insignificance of the cycle, and, through that, cease to fear it. Do not fear death, and, moreover, do not fear life.

Devotion

So it’s back here again with myxie-mouthed me

And the News of the World and the old BBC

And the Secret Service and the KGB

And the dish-eyed young children and the artillery



Yes it’s back here again with the Sturm and the Drang

And the trees by the road where the cameras hang

And the memory failed as the soaring light sang

To people immune to its splitting bright song



And it’s back here again with a spoon in my mouth

With the fear of the sentence set by the devout

With the pledges to loved ones with interests to tout



With the fear of the abject light not going out

Epigraph to the Prologue

The metal casts a bitter shadow on my day -

I don't know whose mistake.

The truth and light, they say, show you the way -

The pallor I can't take.

The final plan, I'm told, will take my eyes,

The purples all away.

What plan is that for which all voices die?

What do they never say?

I will not dare to fly so high

I will not dare to cling to lust

Memories so frail and light

I must not venture there

I do not care to try to die 

I cannot spare the time to fuss

Darknesses all touch on white

I feel I'm going there

I am not fit to live on high

I do not have the nerve to try

And darknesses all touch on white, 

And I fear I'm going there.