It was a typical day as I wandered along the roads of the small, gloomy town. I kicked a pebble out of my way as if it were some serious obstruction deterring me from moving forward. Forward? Where was I going, anyway? I always walked this way when I went for walks. I never thought about it much…I guess I’m thinking about it now though. I know why I walk this way. It’s the graveyard. I walk this part of town because I am always drawn to the cemetery where He lies. I go there to visit Him every once in a while, to kneel before His headstone and offer my silent condolences. As I continued down the lonely stretch of road, I found that my spirit had separated itself from my body, drifting into the cemetery to reflect for a while without the burden of my mortal coil, always a hindrance to clear thinking. It was at His headstone that my spirit came to a rest, and it contemplated with bitterness his demise.1
People often give me strange looks when I there to kneel before His grave and pay my respects. They usually ask me what I’m doing, and inform me that there is no such gravestone, that I must be confused to think Him dead.2
Don’t mind them. The gravedigger told me that most people refuse to see the tombstone. It’s there, but they won’t acknowledge it, like a man intoxicated who regards a homely woman with a number of repulsive warts protruding from her face, but is so foggy of mind and ready of loins that he willingly chooses the delusion of her beauty over the terrible truth of the matter. Such is life. Everyone has their own little delusion called a consciousness, warping their senses, diluting their minds, and filling them full of all sorts of fanciful and superstitious notions.3
Most of the people in town don’t even know the gravedigger’s name. They rarely see him, and only then on the dreary days they carted in the bodies of loved ones to be boxed and covered in soil. It doesn’t put one in a very talkative mood, but a contemplative one. The gravedigger knows by the looks on each and every one of their faces that they ponder their own mortality. He laughs inwardly, understanding their delusion, as if some remnant of us lives on when our flesh rots and our bones crumble to dust and all memory of us is erased from time but a single picture stuffed away in some family album in the ruins of a house long buried in the dirt and soil and corpses of a hundred thousand millennia, a race lost in time on a dead world floating in a dark and forlorn space where once a bright sun shed its light to a race of creatures who crawled beneath it fancying themselves the highest work of some faceless creator.4
The problem has always been his work hours. He works at night, you see, when the town rests. It has always been that way. He wanders out into the darkness dragging the newest donation to the field of the dead with that same bright lamp, a lamp he’s had for years, a lamp that banishes every shadow for fifteen feet, sending every ghost and spirit skittering for the shadows beyond its influence, terrified of being caught in its searing glow. Few people know a thing about the lamp, or about that wise old warden who knows the name of all who have passed and can predict with an astonishing degree of accuracy who he expects to have in next. 5
Over the years I came to know the gravedigger. He would tell me a day, a month, a year ahead of time who was next to come knocking on death’s door. To the very hour of the day he could foresee their demise, and not a single body would enter through his door lacking a newly departed spirit without his knowing long beforehand. This was why I listened intently the day he informed me that He had died. At first, I thought him mad, but he asked me to follow him6
We wandered out into the graveyard, taking a roundabout path to the farthest corner of the field, and there we came to a rest, and the gravedigger leaned in close to me to whisper in my ear. Only then could I finally make out the outline of the tombstone, and as I sat there waiting through the night it finally revealed itself to me, a nondescript granite marker engraved with an epithet bearing the name of one I once knew well. How had His death managed to slip past my notice? He had been murdered. Murdered in the darkness by the hands that made Him, yet not a one would acknowledge his guilt in the deed. Saddened, I read the epithet quietly to myself:7
“The Alpha and the Omega8
The Beginning and the End9
Here I lie slain by the very hands who made me10
Those very hands: Man’s11
Gott ist tott”12
For many years my spirit wandered back to that place, atonement for the hand I had in his murder. Over time, others began to join me, they too acknowledging His demise. But most have yet to acknowledge his passing. His shadow lingers.13
Author notes
Gott ist tot: aber so wie die Art der Menschen ist, wird es vielleicht noch jahrtausendlang Hohlen geben, in denen man seinen Schatten zeigt.
(God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.)
- Friedrich Nietzsche
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Comments
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Interesting, but you took a little too much from Mr. Nietzsche's The Gay Science. Oh yes, I've read it. One can be religious and still revel in the genius of an atheistic madman. I've also read The God Delusion by Charles Dawkins and Letter to a Christian Nation by Samuel Harris.
"Where has God gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto."
-Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay Science) (but you knew that, avid fan of Nietzsche that you are, as am I)
"And so then, sir, we are but specks of nothing in a world of nothing, and with no purpose but to enjoy our fleeting blip in time that we refer to as our life? My dear sir, it may very well be that when the days of men are over and all that once was light and happy is gone (for when Man falls, so shall their happiness), what shall be left, but a dark and hopeless void (for with man and happiness also died their hope) filled with nothing but pointless galaxies spiraling off into hopeless infinity? Are we but nonessential entities, tangled masses of subatomic particles revolving around each other, unaware of what they form? Or are we of more substance than that, are we beyond the simple physical whims that we can see and hear, do we posess a soul, something that we shan't ever fully comprehend that makes us strong and noble, gives us the will to live and the drive to do great and mighty things? Would war continue without us, or must there be a human desire for it? Must happiness die with us? Must we leave reality without a footprint? For were we really here if there is no one to find evidence of us? Who is to say that we are real and who is to say that we exist if we are but pointless, mangled corpses that posess a momentary life? For what is life? What would you call it? Is charity but a flash of a synapse, or the desire of a heart? Is it the blip of a neuron that makes us love, or is it within a soul? Do we feel compassion simply out of selfish, animal necessity, or is there, beyond it, a reason, a direction?"
-R.S Meiler (The Vendor's Benefactor) -
this is fucking awesome... makes me happy anyway. i would love to comment more about the story but all i have running through my head presently is "All the Chicks with the Crimson lips say Cleveland rocks!" talk about your propaganda. but seriously i red through your author page and i am loving some of your views. thank you so much for sharing. have an awesome day.
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Excellent write. It was full of imagery, the vivid descriptions pulling you into it. Very dark, but not in a bad way; more in a contemplative way. Original idea, great work!! Keep it up!
-Jenny -
Awesome work. You used imagery very well, it was a dark feel throughout the poem. Amazing content too.
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this was great, at the begining when you said Him, and He i thought that you meant someone close to you that it was too painful to say is name was burried there. then when we came to the end i said wow. i didn't expect that. great job
cat~ -
This is an incredible piece! At the risk of turning you into a conceited bastard, let me say that you could very well be the next Stephen King - although not a carbon copy of him at all. Your style is quite distinct from his. I think your forte is in stories, more so than standard poetry. I find these fascinating! Encore!!!!!!
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