Near Death Poem by H E Alexander

I relinquished my hold and was taken from within this sleeping flesh,
despite my feeble protestations, which nobody had heard.
I tried with all my fading consciousness to force open my eyes,
but the face of my known reality became ever faint and blurred.
A million ghostly eyes watched my tormented awareness
among distorted faces laughing hideously with hatefulness recurred,
their bone-pierced fingers accusing me of all my human weakness
and through gaping, misshapen mouths whispered unpronounceable words.

I pulled at their putrid, decaying flesh and screamed at them in defiant rage,
grasping all around me for any purchase of hope I could find,
but I was carried, unable to struggle, through the blackness of past ugly souls
and sank beneath the depths of a blood soaked river, leaving all sanguinity behind.
I knew as I reached a void below that the culpability lay with me,
having called out for death in the madness of my chaotic mind,
but she had seized so quickly upon me, not permitting a second chance,
suffocating the whole of my space and transporting me into irrevocable decline.

An army of deformed beings stripped me of my gentleness and tore away my love;
I stood naked before them and not one shred of kindness did they permit me keep.
I felt their spittle in the face of my honesty, my goodness beneath their feet
and I saw my sins parading their glories, exalting themselves in triumphant leaps.
My head swam in the nauseating stench of the history of all man's hate
that swelled before my cataract-screened eyes in revolting mountainous heaps;
beaten, I let them steal my will, I let them eat away at my neglected soul
and deeper I slid into this abyss where Satan danced and evil demons creep.

I had abandoned all hope of salvation from this torturous near death,
until I heard your voice calling in the far away distance of what had been my sleep.
I felt the soft touch of your skin upon me and tasted the sweetness of your tears,
my eyes opened once more, my breast rose and my heart began to weep.