The Recluse's Death-Bed

In a small house that lay overlooking the clogged valley, there is a room whose only light came from a dim wall-lamp.The recluse lay in a double-bed, that never fulfilled its promise, he lay there alone waiting to let go.He has lived in the house for forty years, he had big ambitions when he bought it but all came crashing down in a midst of drunken stupors and postponed tomorrows.

Throughout his reclusive years he had been proud and torn by his solitude.He never apologized for it, not even to himself, and now there was no one to hear him utter his last thoughts.He has felt all that you and I felt, now he speaks without the inhibitions of fear and sorrow.For we never completely expose our thoughts, not even in the most solemn confessions for we always have an eye on how they may effect the world of tomorrow.Now the recluse has no tomorrow so his words know no fear.

Listen to his words
All those far and near
So as he dies
We could live free of fear.

His life soon dies
But his death lives,
Words from an ending beginning
He now gives:

"How is it that only when it is ending do I understand life? Though I am not surprised I have always understood things long after they mattered.I was always a thousand miles behind.But how was I to know? No one ever told me about this guessing game.Even as I was baptized all they told me was "go with God", go with Him where? Will He come for me? Where shall I meet Him? They never told me to look for these answers, I always thought if I did the right thing someone would tell me.So I always waited.

I waited for love! And only now I see that it found me, but did I know? How could I? I just kept living as I knew how; destructively.Hoping love would adjust to me.Adjust to me! But why would it? I did nothing to deserve it.I wish I knew that then, o wish I did, how I would have changed.Not my life, no not my life! But I would have changed my attitude, I would not have wallowed in my own myre, I would have fought fought fought for what I desired! So what if I failed.Is not failure a victory in itself, a victory over non-existence?

O now listen to me, an old fool going on and on about love.Let's face it, it was never for me.As long as I had a new cigarette pack on the table and a full liqour cabinet I couldn't care less about love.

I did not care for achievements either.I always saw them as a surrende.For I never chose my goals.The world I was spit into chose them for me.And they were made of the filthiest metal.They disgusted me so I kept well away from them.All I cared for was rolling in the grass in the nearby fields.They're gone now of course, replaced by a whore-house they call public appartments! But yes I loved rolling in those lonely fields.All life was there for me.At times I would share it as well; with friends that came and went, with women that knew me simply intimately, once a man as well.

What are these petty thoughts worth? "None but they are mine".Thats how I always justified my thinking.But oh the wasted hours in this lonely bed wasted on thinking.It never got me anywhere.Now I see thinking as a forgetting, a forgetting of life.There is nothing my thoughts can teach mr that I can't learn from the grass wet with winter dew.Yet here I am in my last moments...still thinking.No I m...must s-top I don't want...t...o forg-et any...more."