April is National Poetry Month! Okay, one more Matthew Van Der Boot inspired poem.
When the Levee Breaks (not the one by Led Zeppelin)
You read somewhere that the moment you die,
all of your memories come back to you at once,
so that what may seem like seconds to the living,
is in death, an eternity.
No was or will be, only the flood
of your experiences crashing over you
like the ocean through a hole in the wall,
like the levee when it breaks in that Led Zeppelin song.
Or is it more like that story you read in English,
the one where the hanged man dreams he escapes
into the river and returns to his wife all in the time
it takes the noose to snap his neck?
And then what? Heaven? Hell?
Neither seem very likely.
Reincarnation maybe?
That would be nice, wouldn’t it,
to go back to the start, try again?
But here on the floor of this gas station
convenience store watching the
blood dribble like a leaky faucet
from the hole in your chest,
you think, most likely,
it’s none of the above.