Night Cemetery

Painting by Christopher Marc Ford

He has always been drawn to cemeteries, from a young age, when he didn’t know fear yet, or the intricacy of life and death. Later in life, he learned the complicated truth about emptiness of the living dead and the totality of a life’s end.

He doesn’t believe in life after death, nor the grand closure death may bring to the human souls. He gets comfortable with death, like birth, breathing, hunger, thirst, sleep, arousal. These sensations are striped down to the natural form of things, without the need for questioning or overthinking.

Tonight, he was motivated to take a walk in the cemetery to get some fresh air, to get unstuck in his creativity, to deconstruct the somewhat overwhelming feelings and all the while numb sensation.

Maybe it’s the blue moonlight reflecting the quietness of the dead, maybe it’s darkness presenting herself as a lover, he broke free from his jeans and linen shirt, exposing his chest to breath freely. He lay on his bare back, let the moisten soft grass caress his over sensitive skin, he felt the softness and teasing. The flexing of muscles drove the lawn bugs to hiding.

He experienced a surge of energy from the earthing, sparks of electricity coursing through his body, building up in his torso. Without any conscious awareness, he started to stroke himself with firm pressure while staring into the void of the inky sky. His palm pulsating in sync with the blood-filled veins, without knowing how close he got, the flash of shooting stars brought about his eruption.

Slowly he began to notice his own breathing; the steady rhythm of his heartbeats returned; the feeling of an uncomplicated emptiness stayed with him in the deep of the night, in the cemetery filled with the serenity of the dead.

Resting

You are remembered on earth here
where the land meets the sea
Your ashes and bones vibrated
by the waves battering the rocks
unending
and yet
you are begging for more
to remind you that
your life is ongoing
after its last breath
till the ocean erodes the land
You go under the water
and be free

Photos by Cassa Bassa, Waverly cemetery, Bondi beach, Sydney, Australia

Shadow box

I moved country, continent, hemisphere
I fit my life into a suitcase
I came naked
I will go naked
It is one suitcase too much

memory fades
happy or sad
we live momentarily
eventually memory loss

what do I hold dearly
will I recognise
the you and me once been
in the shadowbox
chained around my neck

the picture will be so blur
in my failing mind
the shadow box will be so worn out
by the fiddle of my fingers
you perhaps will be long gone
with my smile imprinted to
your soul

%d bloggers like this: