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Literature Text
To stand on the Edge of Forever
And to look down, at the black swirling chaos below...
Horror fills the heart, at the sight of the infinite abyss
At the lack of human knowledge, as to
What lieth aneath
In titan oceans, waves wash over the blackest depths
Their faces to the sky, beseeching Moon and Sun
For in brightness they can forget the terrors below.
And now, in my own private Hell -- or something like it
Memories I have kept buried forever
Immolated in front of the altar of Sanity
Spill out in a single tear, from the eyes of the heart,
For my heroes of childhood long dead...
Their faces warp and whirl in the blackness I see
Amongst the elder beasts of Time and Space...
Come with me and make believe
The world will be as nectar in the sieve
You can die as if you’re living
You can take as if you’re giving...
The voices call to me -- from beyond!
As if that one phrase could change the Fabric of the Universe
Could rip this black opaque chaos below me
That swirls and snakes about...could rip it all to pieces.
Giving into sorrow was never as easy as this
A single tear, from the eyes of the soul
Shed for everyone, like me, dying to die.
Flip my coin to Life and Death
And on either side it lands, I’ll disagree.
But what did Hamlet say once?
No living man can speak of the afterlife...
It’s true you know, if you’re dead, you can’t be alive,
And the moving specter of a soul, wide-eyed and hideous
Becomes nothing more than a bad joke poorly told.
But what did Maduin say to poor Madonna?
We will never know unless we try...
In one last feverish moment, the swirling black clouds became mirrored
And I saw myself as something so infinitely revolting, even that famous phrase
The Thing That Should Not Be
Could not do me justice...
And I roared in anguish, every sinew screaming at the horrible image, and I flew into the depths,
I did as Carl Sagan told me to, and stood at the Edge of Forever, and jumped off...
...I awoke the next morning, shocked to find
I was still alive.
I have stood on the Edge of Forever
And looked down, at the black swirling chaos below...
And to look down, at the black swirling chaos below...
Horror fills the heart, at the sight of the infinite abyss
At the lack of human knowledge, as to
What lieth aneath
In titan oceans, waves wash over the blackest depths
Their faces to the sky, beseeching Moon and Sun
For in brightness they can forget the terrors below.
And now, in my own private Hell -- or something like it
Memories I have kept buried forever
Immolated in front of the altar of Sanity
Spill out in a single tear, from the eyes of the heart,
For my heroes of childhood long dead...
Their faces warp and whirl in the blackness I see
Amongst the elder beasts of Time and Space...
Come with me and make believe
The world will be as nectar in the sieve
You can die as if you’re living
You can take as if you’re giving...
The voices call to me -- from beyond!
As if that one phrase could change the Fabric of the Universe
Could rip this black opaque chaos below me
That swirls and snakes about...could rip it all to pieces.
Giving into sorrow was never as easy as this
A single tear, from the eyes of the soul
Shed for everyone, like me, dying to die.
Flip my coin to Life and Death
And on either side it lands, I’ll disagree.
But what did Hamlet say once?
No living man can speak of the afterlife...
It’s true you know, if you’re dead, you can’t be alive,
And the moving specter of a soul, wide-eyed and hideous
Becomes nothing more than a bad joke poorly told.
But what did Maduin say to poor Madonna?
We will never know unless we try...
In one last feverish moment, the swirling black clouds became mirrored
And I saw myself as something so infinitely revolting, even that famous phrase
The Thing That Should Not Be
Could not do me justice...
And I roared in anguish, every sinew screaming at the horrible image, and I flew into the depths,
I did as Carl Sagan told me to, and stood at the Edge of Forever, and jumped off...
...I awoke the next morning, shocked to find
I was still alive.
I have stood on the Edge of Forever
And looked down, at the black swirling chaos below...
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Last week, several semi-catastrophic events culiminated into a my closest brush with suicide in years.
This poem is about that, but, in many ways, is extremely experimental.
In many forms of epic poetry and old-fashioned writing, references to mythology, popular culture, history, the Bible, and so on were used to fashion a better-sounding work. In this experimental poem, I have done just that -- only the references are modern, and from the Twentieth Century.
The title and the reference to Carl Sagan is a homage to the latter's seminal work from 1980, Cosmos. The last sentence of the chapter of the book on black holes and other mysterious phenomena, called "The Edge of Forever," runs like this: Standing on the edge of Forever, we might simply jump off... Combining this powerful metaphor with "The Brink of Time," a swirling black chaos where all of Time intersects in the SNES game Chrono Trigger, and thus the nucleus of this poem was born.
The reference to Maduin and Madonna should be obvious to any SNES gamer: it's the beautiful scene where Maduin, the Esper, and Madonna the mortal virgin, make love and give birth to Terra, all from Final Fantasy VI. Again, I'm using a modern reference to embellish a work.
The inspiration, obviously, came from obscure and rather mixed sources, but suicide is a devestatingly difficult issue to put into any sort of perspective, much less a poetic/artisitc one, and I had to go with what ended up coming to me.
I am very pleased with this work, despite its difficult conception and surreal structure.
This poem is about that, but, in many ways, is extremely experimental.
In many forms of epic poetry and old-fashioned writing, references to mythology, popular culture, history, the Bible, and so on were used to fashion a better-sounding work. In this experimental poem, I have done just that -- only the references are modern, and from the Twentieth Century.
The title and the reference to Carl Sagan is a homage to the latter's seminal work from 1980, Cosmos. The last sentence of the chapter of the book on black holes and other mysterious phenomena, called "The Edge of Forever," runs like this: Standing on the edge of Forever, we might simply jump off... Combining this powerful metaphor with "The Brink of Time," a swirling black chaos where all of Time intersects in the SNES game Chrono Trigger, and thus the nucleus of this poem was born.
The reference to Maduin and Madonna should be obvious to any SNES gamer: it's the beautiful scene where Maduin, the Esper, and Madonna the mortal virgin, make love and give birth to Terra, all from Final Fantasy VI. Again, I'm using a modern reference to embellish a work.
The inspiration, obviously, came from obscure and rather mixed sources, but suicide is a devestatingly difficult issue to put into any sort of perspective, much less a poetic/artisitc one, and I had to go with what ended up coming to me.
I am very pleased with this work, despite its difficult conception and surreal structure.
© 2005 - 2024 Royal-Sovereign
Comments6
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Good, the use of quotes really built this poem up. However, I don't remember the Hamlet quote. When did he say that?