Roused from a long and fitful sleep
I panicked

There seemed no boundaries
Or if there were
They were invisible
Devoid of meaning
As if the dance of life and death
Had no partners

At which end of non-existence
Is there true meaning?
Birth or death, equally gating
The incomprehensible, the non-void

Between the ends, torrents and eddies
Of love and fear, of slackwater
Of cascades year by year
Day by day, undimensional
Moment by moment.

Between the ends, there are no ends
Religion seared the love of life,
Cooked it from my father’s heart
Left it parched

To me, it offered a curse
Something relentless, deniable
But inescapable

I am left without excuses
Have I lived well?
Have I been an annoyance?

Up there, in the next world,
We figured,
You could barter stuff like that
What kind of deal can you make
With psychoanalysis?

These Viennese chaps
Are so clinical, you know,
Tall, cold,
Like surgical steel,
Never hungering.
A priest, at least,
Will crave your soul
To eat.

I know how to sleep,
How to wake,
How to kill
And how to live

Let that be my epitaph