Death's Body

by OVERTON LOVE TURNER, JR.

From thoughts inspired by Alfred Lord Whitehead, Soren Kierkegaard, Heraclitus, The Bible, Socrates, A. E. Houseman, H. F. Lyte, William Whiting, and Kahlil Gibran.

DEATH'S BODY

Since the all we know is process,
then reality is a fickle chameleon
of color vision etched across the cosmic spectrum that changes every bit of every
atom at constant pace every micro-second;
We cannot behold the same cosmos twice.

Thus it came to pass that I infold this body of death.
I am the sperm and ovum that died in the interest of consciousness.
I am the zycote that disappeared to become
Baby Boy Blue and Little Bo Peep too.
Yet I knew nothing of that death.

It was process that took care
of Little Boy Blue and Little Bo Peep too,
and I forgot that grave from which spring forth the bubbling youth.
Oh, I have lived days in my exuberant young life
that passed to soon, those peaceful days of lying in the soft green grass with my friend, a lassie fair and true.

It was a tragic sense of process that filled my sails and pushed my boat across the choppy waves
of Eagle Lake, and furled my youthful frivolity.
That mortal sailor passed through the requiem - to become the man. Burial at sea.

I have known death time after time and did not fill in the face,
When those that I had loved ceased to be.
I knew death but death they did not know.
Paradox, Paradox - only the living know death.

Death puts on a masquerade to deceive the process by hiding behind a reveling mask, but that is of no avail
mask and face change together.
the party is over, the dance ends.

If I had a time lapse movie of my mortal history I would meet a million strangers and wonder who they were,
not knowing they, everyone, was I.

Our death's from grave to grave, move at such a snail's pace,
that death is void of reality.

What is real?
Two lovers will never kiss the same lips twice.
We lay upon those who cause another’s death...death. Father, forgive them, they know not what they do. What is death but to disappear;
The baby disappears into the adult.
The adult disappears into the dust;
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

I put the sword through another’s heart, knowing that he will disappear,
but so is "out-of sight, out-of-mind", for even if the victim breathes, in life he is stone cold dead.

Every rejection is a murder,
for which we must invent a clever lie.

When that Galilean peasant Jesus uttered,
"To lust after a woman is already adultery, for the act is in the heart,"
He observed a categorical principle...
to be angry with a man is murder
for which one will answer to Gehenna.

It is not by stethoscope or EEG that one confirms death;
EEG and stethoscope only shows that a soul has come
to life's end, but life's end
is not the last thing.

The sting of death is only for the living, and to ostracize is murder, it is to dehumanize and trash a human soul.

Oh, friend, our definition of death and murder is a euphemism,
because we do not know how to love.

Process - without process, no life.
Process - without process, no death.
Without mind - no process.

Thus have I come to my hoary age.
And people look at my gnarled body,
"Yes, but his hair is turning white."
And I am self-conscious with my limp ...homage to process.

With grief my heart is longing
for the glittering friends I had for all the golden maidens and all the fealty lads.

Things Change

Since there is process:
Is there not also permanence?

Abide with me (permanence);
Fast falls the eventide (process).

ETERNAL FATHER, STRONG TO SAVE...

Mind knows not the eternal, for to know is process,
the eternal is not knowledge
the eternal is "no where, no when."

Time and eternity; process and permanence;
MYSTERY!

Death's body is bathed in the effusion of the enigma - bread and wine.
It is not wisdom to be only wise.

Why fear death? Life moves us from death to death,
in order that life may be.

God, Permanence, Process, Death, Love:
They are all the same word!
GREAT IS THE MYSTERY OF HOLINESS!
Socrates observed -
"Who knows if life is better than death?"

WHO?