My Dash

I have been dashing through my life,
Even when it seemed that time was going slow.
Time never really goes slow, but always runs.
Every moment quicky comes and quickly must go;
And every moment comes to life but once.
And all the days, like the sun playing tag with the moon,
Start with a sunrise, and end with a sunset and a sky full of stars,
And are gone so soon.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Now my lifetime has mostly fled, and I'll soon be dead;
Dying now, with a heart full of hurts and scars.
My life now is almost all sorrow and strife.
My life now is fear of my shrinking future, and coming eternal death.
I truly treasure every breath.
But I have little happiness left, and almost no pleasure.
My life is coming to a close; I'm down to my time's last measure.
I cannot find work that I can do, and I have very little cash.
My health insurance is almost certainly at some soon time going to end.
I have friends, but I don't have a really rich friend.
Yes, it looks like, round any bend,
I'll soon be crashing to my end.
So now I would look backward on my dash.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The dash--you know what I mean--
The dash is something everyone has seen.
It comes between numbers, carved usually in stone--
Standing cold and alone.
Or sometimes carved in wood;
For those who would have afforded stone if they could.
The dash that has more meaning than anything else ever had or could have,
And is more meaningless.
Like a bubble that has burst into death-drops, and fallen down to dust.
The dirt that cannot feel joy or hurt; the dust in the coffin, in the grave.
When that time comes, all that is left is the dash.
The dash, that speaks of many a kiss;
And of many a hit, and many a miss;
Of day that is passed, and of long-lasting night.
When will a voice ever again say: "Let there be light"?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
We have many birthdays, but only one birth year. 
And only one death year, too, I fear.
Born once; and die once--once, once and for all.
Empty eternity, beyond hearing any call,
Past seeing any sight.
The end of days, with an endless night.
Unless--unless God loves us, in spite
Of many myriads of monstrosities that deny that quite,
And tell us all to go to Hell, by much suffering and many a heartless blight.
Still it is possible, though we don't know why--
Not really--why we have to suffer and die--
It all still might end up right.
And God be praised, if He someday soothes every sorrowed plight;
And if the dead, all the poor dead, ever again live to see God's gloried gift of light!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
But all we know for sure is the dash.
That dash between the birth year and the death year,
That marks the living of our life and all its flowers in flight and flash,
And leaves behind mere residue of dreamless dust and carcinogenic ash.
The dash.  The dash is what marks our life, when life has flown.
That short little dash, carved between birth and death, in cold hard stone:
For those lucky enough to receive such a monument.
As for me, there is no grave waiting for me.  I shall be sent
To a pauper's pit, and buried there with other bodies, Nazi-style.
No one will come to my grave to weep, and in fond memories smile;
But then, everything is impermanent.
I treasure every breath.
If all that all of us can know for sure is the dash,
Then all I know for sure is life now, and my coming death.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
My coming death: it is a dancing skeleton in my dreams.
Nightmares, from which I wake in screams.
Then, fully wakened, I realize
The real nightmare is now, awake.  The scientific truth I prize
Tells me that death is really near, not just a fear in dreaming;
I look in the mirror to see my living eyes,
And I feel that all I am is only mockery and seeming.
I feel so scared, so sad, so abandoned, and alone.
How can I look back on my dash, when I will not have a gravestone?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Well--if even one of my poems survives,
And makes it into anthologies,
Then--like Thomas Chatterton--after death my mind, as memories,
In the form of poetry, will still be something alive, a thing that thrives.
My mind will live in other minds, reading me, and giving me life;
To know my feelings and thoughts, my joy and pain, my peace and strife.
My dash will then--printed on paper--in multiple places, brightly appear;
Solidly set between my first year and my last year.
Between my birth year and my death year.
Perhaps many others of my poems will trail in train--
So many little parts of me will in some sense live again!
Though I myself shall have died of cancer, in tears and fear and pain.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
My heart shall then have finished its futile love, its follies and fallacies, in life's frightening flash.
What then shalll have been the meaning of my heart, my world, my dream--my lightning dash;
When reality for me has crumbled into unreality,
And it doesn't matter anymore how smart I was, how much I loved, or all I wanted to do and see;
Nor how badly I planned my life--all the wrong decisions I made--
Though I was gifted with a mind so capable, so clear, capacious, creative, and clever.
Now, amidst the Second Great Depression, cancer calls on me to fall into the chilling shade.
Whether I end up, as probable, in a pauper's pit, or somehow get a marked and honored grave--
What meaning will my little dash, on stone or wood or paper, really have?
When I am very likely nothing and nowhere--just gone--forever:
What meaning will my dash have, that death cannot dissever?
The only thing I know for sure is true,
Is that the meaning of my dash--my life--will then be up to you.

=======================


--by Michael LP, aka MLP
aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC, aka Mr. Poet
Copyright © 2010 by Michael L.P.   All rights reserved