Electric fairy lights dance on darkened windows

Sparks in stasis framed by the night

Where I raise my glass to the moon

And take stock of all I've seen

The good, the bad and the melancholy 

It gets deep inside the bottle

Rabbit holes may offer madness

But the bottle offers oblivion

While I observe significant structures

That echo deeper meanings

Modern crucifixes and midnight wires

Deliver words of many a saviour

Digital scriptures that will never have the weight of a universal dogma

To certain masses

But individuals crave absolution of a different design

Free thought and liquor linger on mine

My tongue flows on midnight rhymes

Spiced rum and a world come undone…

© Richard Withey. All rights reserved.

The sky is blue yet all I see is gray,

Imaginary clouds obscure my faith.

Upon my life my depression does prey,

Faithfully hunted by a stalking wraith.

One with malevolent design in mind,

Striving to stifle any elation.

To render felicity wholly blind,

Triumphant, inflaming my frustration.

Dominated with malicious intent,

This entity from which I can’t escape.

Relentless pursuit, doggedly hell-bent,

Derisive, assuming a benign shape.

I sense its presence suffocating me,

Precisely extorting my liberty.

Time will tell what you and I become.

At least that all was not in vain.

Or will it show our striving and thriving weren't one and the same?

Will we see the reason for the feasting or the crumb?

Surely not in this life, and in the next they'll have no name.

Time will show us folly built on folly,

not least those we raised so high

as our salvations and our exits. And no amount of sighs

or groans or wails or gnashing teeth or howls or stacked up sorries

stop the reeling back of time and time and time again of whys.

Time will heal the wounded wounds of time,

and dry the tears of a myriad years.

Then what will we have to show for all the time we spent in fear?

Will we see the difference between the stupid and sublime?

Or will it be as nothing upon nothing standing there?

I used to think like you. I used to look for meaning. I used to want things to matter. I used to think that there had to be some greater purpose to my life, to my presence.

But there isn't. Nothing we silly little humans do means anything. None of it matters. Ultimately, nobody cares.

We're all beautifully worthless, you know. Everything that we worry and care too much about, every meticulously planned action and line, all were completely, blissfully unimportant in the end.

In the end, we all die. We are forgotten, if not soon, than eventually.

That idea used to terrify me, it used to make me wonder why I bother doing anything, why I bother placing value in anything.

But eventually I realized the truth: it's liberating. It's liberating not to matter, not to mean anything. Nothing has any inherent meaning, so it's your job to assign meaning. or not to. You can - and  should, I think - do what makes you happy, because that's the only thing you truly control. You should work for yourself, for your interests, because when humans have gone extinct, nobody will remember you anyway.

If you know what I now know, you'd be selfish.