Welcome To Your Long Dying Poem by Patti Masterman

Welcome, to your long dying-
Unsaid words, empty gestures
The substance you always searched for
Was never real, and you discover
We will all be dying alone
Of grief, of the faux, negligible existence
Everything taken away at the end
Dark holocaust swallow us whole
And strangle the last sound we make
Welcome, to nights of tremulous tears
Inside the winding cloth you've made:
The teeming brain's multiforme emotions
The day you were born, an empty place was created also
You were never too rare or special to die
The train whistle announces you've been left behind
To contemplate your impersonal end
We are clothed of the same dust
All arrows point in the same direction
Both the high and low road are a mobius strip
Eternal life, but a dream of dimensional matter
Held for a short time in bondage-
Time on any scale is nearly invisible to us
Welcome, to your long dying
Which is but the first breath of non-existence.