Endarken - Premature

Premature
---------

There have been days i've almost died.
Kidnappings, car crashes - tropical disease -
to go to the brink yet come back alive
scares me sober, 
frees me of my enmities.

i met this guy in hospital -
i want to tell you like he told me.
"You only have one life to live, 
don't choose to die slowly."
He was in for bone marrow, 
us for haematology,
he was fifty, worn and weathered;
and i? i am just twenty three.

One day i will be fifty -
sixty or sixty-five if 
i am still as lucky 
in postponing dying.

Believe we're gonna get there 
with timely taste-tests along the way...
each slurp providing clarity
to savour each next day.

i am not scared of living.
Death does not depress me so
that i must walk a ghostly path
through this life. i know
that too many are already dead,
before their time has come.
Too many have already died 
before their cause was won.

Too many cry for death and dead,
when neither cry for us;
i will not trade my very breath
for i am curious.

Show me lives that have been missed,
please let me live for them.
Give me a piece of everything
the earth still gives, to breathe, 
again.

2004

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