the fear of dying

Comparative truth is

a casual rationalizing account

for our worth in almost all matters.

But it takes insightful living

to appreciate dying and death.

Our mechanisms of experience

for this process seem to fail us

at the inevitable approach of death.

These very mechanisms

compel us towards conclusions

as presumption,

towards judgments that exile,

towards observations that are

less empathetic and empathic,

towards intimacies that leave us

sickened by the circumstance

and concessionary by nature,

towards shared lessons

that are less likely embraced,

towards distances rendered

by uninspired responses.

Expectation is a hostile environment

for conscious dying to occur.

False attachment is at the fabric

of an apparently meaningful death.

Death then appears to be superficial

without the hard evidence of living.

We hold others

by account in distinction as separate

and yet paradoxically connected.

We impress each other and remiss

by remembrances of past actions.

These mechanisms of experience,

applied to dying,

have never come under

any conscious scrutiny.

There is little observance for clarity

or deliverance of current presence

or procession of being,

no spirit at the very core

inevitability revealed or on task,

and yet, always justified

by the inference to their personality.

Where is it in another

that we so subtly search for,

so effortlessly and so diligently,

that it can be found

in this situation, either way?

Where is it that the connections

that run so deep

and seems so unjustified

by these current circumstances,

are and yet remain forthcoming?

The fear of dying

must be the punch line

to a very dumb joke

about human beings themselves.

What we inherited from objectification

fails us in the end,

as the false end.

We are subjectively engaged

with tools of experience

that do not permit us

the conveyance of being

or the collective of heart

that we somehow deny.

The fear of dying

is an un-skilled incantation.

It is an avoidance ritual,

forcing us to be more impromptu

as death approaches.

There is inadequate preparation

that produces slights

against the sacredness of living

but yet left-handed compliments

to the existence of essence

are there,

all along the way.

And in the end,

fear is not a giving way.

With fear set aside,

there is no more,

“I’m only the messenger’,

no more the antidote for being present,

no more the charade

of the excuse or the alibi,

no more the anecdotals

to fill the silence,

no more the reliance

on landmarks of control,

no more the overly concern

about the trivials of the day

no more reasons for

or positions against topics

of a lesser concern,

no more . . . other thens,

but then . . .

there is the letting go.

And for us,

the fear of dying

sees itself alive

by us who are left behind

to be satisfied

by that last breath

and then . . . gone.

As if only our every breath

was that rich and complete.

All along . . .

but unnoticed,

without the fears,

that may truly be so . . .