Darkness Poem by Achim Wollscheid

I've experienced death only once before
and there was no bright light.
There was rather anticipation and curling waves of fright.
I lay lifeless as a beaten bird in the middle of the street
with wide bloodied gashes dressing my face down to my feet.
Oh the summer sun, it fell right from the sky
without salutation, without slight remorse.
The dim world with its strange gloom hang in my eye;
the devil rapidly reached for my pale shaking hands.
Shamefully I looked to his burning gates,
shriveled from the sight of those desperate lands.

I beheld not the past, but the future, accelerated
somehow within the parameter of death's nearing time;
I nearly remember anything but the vision of many smiling faces.
That of Satan's faded like a beautiful effect while I listened to the church bells loudly chime.

The world, still dark and the Lord, still numb,
my mind was faced with two alternate endings.
Oh, but how then I forgot existence and its very beginnings.
Surely it was rumored that Heaven ought be a magnificent palace,
the resting place for those who daily suffered without complaint.
All too quickly, my heart accepted the notion without much restraint.

Unable to lift my head heavenward, it tensed on the ground.
The somber shade of night closed in all around
dispersing the faint outline of the blissful clouds.
Before then I cried tears for reasons all vain
like the cruelty of life or the cursed rush of rain,
but that day I felt the movement of such meaningful tears.
The day and night were fleeting with the rest of all my years.
I held to my opinion that I'd never breathe again
and I sank into the depths without repentance for my sins.