The gleaming warriors of Light advance
Aflame with Life, their shields aglow with gold
And lambent fire a glint from sword and lance.
Their silver battle-axes flash and flourish, bold
And brutal in mad massacre. The hordes
Of Death are falling, black-plumed helmets split
As skulls within explode. The scything swords
Have fringed the banners with each rending slit.
Death’s men have floundered, failed,
Skewered by the jeweled lance that spears the brain,
And reeves the heart, weak-shielded and ill-mailed…
Infantries of Death are cruelly slain.
The battlefield’s now sodden with the gore
Of ebon warriors. Onyx helmets lie
Trampled, some with heads within, before
The gilded hooves that clatter, sanguine, by.
Death’s flag with bone-white-face
Is rags. His ink-hued armor plate is rent
And shattered by Life’s spike-thorn mace.
Death’s sword is sundered and his pike staff bent.
And he himself lies maimed upon the moistened sand,
His cypress standard in his gnarling hand
Till tired black fingers spread…and let it fall.
To feel like dying, how would you tell it.
like standing in the desert gasping life.
The hot sun hitting your back, sight blackens,
heat now so intense the oxygen's gone.
Lungs feel they are caving in, gasp for air.
Falling now into a deep dark cold hole,
no vision, just darkness, maybe dampness.
A rainbow of colors brightly appear,
tingling like tree roots in a tunnel.
Foul earthen smell as you gasp last life breath.
Sounds so strange, ringing in a distant light,
Family pictures fading from the mind.
Trying to say "good-bye", words do not come,
struggling to move a hand or a finger.
Want to close my eyes, but nothing happens.
Will I be wolken with the next day light,
find the bottom of death dreams final pit?
( I wrote this after a friend commited suicide, and also sparked by Emily Dickinson " It was
not death for I stood up." )