Life's Paradox

In the beginning,

I was bewildered by the

Concepts of the Heaven and the Earth

But mostly, I was scared stiff

Of this voice that spoke within my head

Where was me before this initial awakening?

Is everything so grandiose yet so purposeless only when I think it so?

Whether 12,34,54,76…

I still see everything vaguely

Everything, including myself

Feels like one extensive dream

That I’m only aware of

When detached from this dream of reality

Descartes struggled futilely to distinguish

His place within the membrane of this dream

But finally, he succumbed to the dream’s

Testament of its tangibility

By saying “I think therefore I am!”

He admits that either our surroundings are real

While we’re not

Or, we’re fully aware of ourselves

But deluded by the mystifying visions

Of different interpretations of reality

Often, the feelings of reality are blistering

Then, I can fully find my bearings in one set perception

Only until reality becomes despondent

Then, I begin to reconsider

The actuality of all the things my mind

Believes it is remembering from some

Long-departed scheme of reality

In church, people plaintively beseech

The invincible being of God

Only to rename him as something visible:

His begotten son, Jesus

Because it gives reality greater visibility

Until the ecstasy of a good prayer dissipates and

Leaves us barren

When death encroaches,

Does our contemplation of reality end?

Can we no longer dream of feeling cemented in a true sense of being?

In death, is the nothingness so overwhelming

That nothing depicts it better than

To think of it as the unthinkable

State of Eternal Forgetfulness

Where will it go?

What am I without the illusion of being substantial?

Does my life inevitably cease its feeble crawl towards meaning?

From funerals I've attended, I coldly recall

A sonorous tune played by the organ who

Lamented this paradoxical death

Within a universe that bursts at the seams with

Different scientific theorems which shows

Causation for all things albeit

The source of all this meaning

When we die,

Our brains explode with our theories

Of how we’ll finally conclude

The answer to the perplexing riddle of life

Like stars before death, we’ll increase in size and proportion

With all the memories of our dream-like existence

Then, our brains stop triggering thoughts for ourselves

In our place, our empty bodies become

Black holes for the remainder of humanity

Who hope fervently that within our dead selves there lies

Minute Quantum remnants that will configure

Themselves into a new kind of existence