The Great Nemesis

This is the house of death. I touch the threshold and spiral downward into a vortex of adulthood, youth, childhood, birth, the womb, the zygote, the ovum, the sperm, the miraculous union, the flame of love, the dark, impenetrable matter of before. Death shreds my sinews, crushes my bones. Dust, ash and smoke flavor my flesh until it is palatable to the ancients, to the modern madding crowd. Centripetal night barrels down the tunnel of light, tossing to and fro, crossing, then retreating from the anarchy of desire. Death is the great nemesis, the awful annihilator of the élan vital and the will to power. It thrusts and spreads beyond my loins, up to my brain, spilling over into the field of Being in which we move, live, and flourish, like a grain of corn buried in the soil. Flat loaves of bread crawl across the stony ground, inching toward the terracotta ovens that await them. Here poems lie fallow and faithful, patient for emergence, trusting in a shower of ink to scribble forms on the naked page. Here we thrive with elemental desire. Here we eat pieces of dark matter. O here we die, falling forward into the house of death, its crooked door ajar.

(Inspired by Dostoevsky's novel The House of the Dead.)