Death is a Gemini

image from harvardartmuseum.org

Death is a Gemini

“We all die. The goal is not to live forever, the goal

is to create something that will.”--Chuck Palahniuk.

Death models many masks,

uses divers methods, routes,

vehicles and timing,

and answers to many names:

          end,

            beginning,

                   veil, karma,

                           passage

                                transition.

                                     dirt nap

                                         snuffed out,

                                               slab meat,

                                                  food for worms,

                                                demise,

                                               dying,

                                             expiring,

                                          afterlife,

                                         beyond, 

                                         casualty,

                                         curtains,

                                         darkness

                                       decease

                                     departure,

                                   eradication,   

                                 exit, expiration,

                               extermination,  

                             extinction,

                           finish, loss,

                         mortality,

                       necrosis,

                     oblivion,

                   paradise,

                 repose,

              release,

            defeat,

         silence,

       sleep,

the grim reaper

eternal rest,

tomb pasta,

leaving,

adieu,

bye-bye,

little bang,

closing,

failure,

the hour of,

bitter end,

conclusion,

inexorable, completion, end of the line, past the

knot, lights out, murder, tapped out, counted out,

catastrophe, calamity, kismet, downfall, exodus,

return to sender, egress, cessation, thing of the

past and the lap of the gods.

Death is the supreme shape shifter. It can resemble

Yorick’s skull, the Madonna, Basil Rathbone, Bette 

Davis, William Bendix, Rita Hayworth, Robin Williams,

or my favorite Rod Serling.

Death can take you before birth, or after a century.

It is, can be both darkness & light, cruel & kind,

patient & impatient, wise & stupid, fair & unfair,

bitter & sweet. It is a Gemini, a Janus, the god of

beginnings, gates, transitions, time & duality--

its two faces overseeing the past and the future.

To be a butterfly,

living one month, spreading such

beauty every moment.

Glenn Buttkus

List Poem

Posted over at d'Verse Poets Pub MTB