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A Poem Of Death And Despair

Phillip McMurray

Mar 21, 2017

Lawrence Technological University

107

despair-cry

Why me?

“Why me?” I lamented aloud
As I lay in my steel hospital bed
Slowly dying from esophageal cancer—
My hair has withered away from being
Plush to thinning to cue-ball-style bald.
My skin is white and pale, very dry—
And the prolonged argument I am
Having with the specter of death
Has sheared my hoarse voice
And enclosed my aching throat.

“Why me?” the words oozed forth
From my hanging pink, parched, poised lips,
And although my rhetorical question
Exacerbated my already-inflamed throat
I nonetheless demanded an answer
From the cold, indifferent universe
From which I was about to forever depart.

Other than the annoying, redundant sounds
Of robotic health-monitoring machines
Keeping track of my slow, calm heart rate
And the drip drop of liquid flowing into my veins
From my damp, nutrition-providing IV bag
I heard the sweet sound of complete silence—
The nothingness of a senseless reality
That was neither aware of my arrival here
Nor will notice my approaching exit.
Strangely enough in that deaf tune
I could hear a soft, barely audible reply
As if the universe had answered me
And dryly proclaimed…”Why not?”

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