THE PATHWAY
My world roils with emptiness
Great black boiling clouds of nothing
I am a brass shell of emptiness
Legs and arms attached
Without feeling or weight.
I look outside for substance
Something to fill the blackness inside
Nothing looks solid enough to bouy me
It will do no more than briefly fill the void
Before swirling down a black whirlpool.
The reality of food is nothing.
A short cessation of empty feeling,
It withers in the grey mists that mass
Grimly triumphant in their lack of being.
They have no body to defeat.
Swelling with nothing;
My body grows fat from stuffing.
Inside me the emptiness grows.
A reality without form
Pain without pain
I look ahead and see nothing
Only grey paths winding
Every path with the same end
Emptiness
Nothing
Must I drag myself down each path in turn
Knowing the end that is to be?
Must I endure the robbers and brigands
The wild beasts and the angels?
Why? I see no reason.
Why can’t I lay myself peacefully down
Here in the dust of the path?
Here where my tired empty feet have taken me.
Shade or heat, the soft dust will caress me like a bed.
None to cry and none to mourn.