Anatomy Of Death Poem by Adeoye Adetoba

Death comes at its time;
Sometimes untimely.
Peacefully in a sleep
Or gruesome by the shattering bullet.
From the sharpness of blades,
Hacking flesh and bones
To the savagery of fire
Consuming with blind rage,
Souls have been decimated
And plunged into deep eternal darkness.
Through the throes of painful deaths
Or the last gasp of peaceful breaths,
Life eventually comes to null.

Staring at death,
They took to their heels.
Life to them embodied going to school,
Making money, marrying, having children
And dying.
Trapped in the cycle of servitude
And the stranglehold of poverty,
The Grim Reaper, with its cloak of sorrow,
Plunders and pillages at will.

Prometheus strayed from tradition,
Had his liver eaten out in punishment;
The glory of his sacrifice lit the world.
The man from Galilee embraced death at the cross,
Defeated was not his cause but salvation to all.
Socrates with hemlock burning down his throat
That knowledge may stream across to man.
Galileo, the prison he endured in grief,
To keep the sun as the centre of our lives.

Sacrifice and not servitude,
Honour it breeds and hope gone forlorn.
Bravery and not cautiousness
Conquers the rugged terrain to freedom.
Destruction awaits them
That treats knowledge with a sneer
While embracing the narcissistic view of self—
The sure path to death.
'Ye are gods little children,
Why die like mere men'
When death comes to all.