The Afterworld

A metaphysical music plays chess with Death. No one remembers their last move. Lost in the
greater glory of the next. We must be careful to pretend. Symbols clash. And an orchestra of
stars follows the Chorus as they glide across the heavens chanting no man is happy. Until he
dies. Shah mat. No earthly power outlives the rain of time.

Once more the fields are undersea. Once more we must await a reawakening, the landlocked
spark to ebb the peace of this great flood. Of shame. They know not what they do. The flame of ambition that might flare into a greater good is doused by greed. Few are those who love this world for what it is, a gift of place, turned green in time, a tender understanding of change within the circle of life. A virtue meant to kindle our pyre of pain. And lift into the ether the spirit of being thus. Not more. To hold each other within the limits of measure.

Yet this the wealthy cannot do. They are afraid to die. And so it is in the last epoch of recorded time that thought machines may find a way to Mars. Another place within the selfsame Sun of man. Shattered sneers of stone sunk in red sand, our mighty kings of finance and big tech, colossal wrecks of self-made laws, evil, cruel, and vengeful in rapacity. Their deification of success commensurate with human meanness, stupidity, laziness, and an economically feasible construction of holes within which to bury the heads of not only states but simple men and women who would bow before thinking and believe.

It is an aim one can feel. That logically impossible moment when Zeno’s arrow strikes the ice at the bottom of the world and all the words that are here marshalled retreat, dissolve, and finally settle into what must be. The end.