Death Is a Deliverer
Hear me read
the poem as
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Watch me read
the poem as
an MP4 file.
Death is a deliverer
From fierce and pointless pain,
From drugged-out days and nauseous nights
One would not see again;
From life whose only passion is
To free itself from life,
Eternally anesthetized,
Numb to need or knife;
From desperate dependence
And gross indignity,
Lying in the cesspool
Of one's own shit and pee;
From being a non-person
Whose person is abused,
Dethroned from even one's own brain,
Perpetually confused.
Yet though one would no longer be,
The instinct is not gone:
The heart and mind are all for death;
The body lingers on.
Copyright by Nicholas Gordon. Free for personal or non-commercial use.
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