Death, The Great Adventure

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of being
[--Carl Jung]

Sometimes red curtains fall
Before the act has headed for the wings
As on that night disaster crawled out from the stalls...

Suddenly the dark, the thickest Stygian dark
Pressing on all sides with vertigo
Running from the quickest in the sickest abyss
My spirit's lifted by an angel of woe.

A dredged up dreadful past
Drags discordant thoughts my way
Unforgiven and driven to despair
I sense the mordant wraith Azazel
Standing there.

Now the vision simmers
I spy a distant gleam
Racing ever closer
Through this persistent dream.

And by its welcome glimmer
Writhing into sight
The brutish groping nightmares
That hide beside the light.

Then a roar
And a voice like a pride of lions
Thunders from the maw
In a blackened mass
The creatures flee
Screaming bloody murder as
A shining gateway opens for me.

Death, the great adventure.

At the peril of my soul
I welcome death, the great avenger.

Spared this awful realm
Where those who stalk the living haunt the murk
Untethered pleasures keep them tied to flawed
Human.

I'm floating upwards still, to where the tunnel mouth reveals
Two manticores that ward an ebon door
I must lean resolve as the luminance dissolves
And I am thrust headlong into the venomous jaws
I am in darkness again
But here accursedness is vastly deeper.

Unforgiven and given to torment
I am nothing
Grotesque, grotesque, bereft of judgement.

This abyss, a void
Where stripped of all but self
One must wish to be destroyed.

To pass on somewhere else.

Beyond this pit of wicked shouts
Of madness and fallacies
Aeons I failed to rail my doubts
Before fear left love saving me.

Then a roar
And a voice like a clash of titans
Thunders from the maw
In a seething mass
The horrors flee
Screaming bloody murder as
A shrouded sky opens immensely.

Listen!
What Eden shall arise
Abundant from the cliffs that stunt hell's
Redundant cries?

A view of breathtaking beauty
Unveils, as the sun dispenses perversities.

Death, death, the great adventure.

For the glory of my soul
I welcome death, the great avenger.

The damaged man revives
With dawning truth, this morning suits
The world I left abruptly
In exaltation, I find myself alive
Near—death to steer a long life led corruptly.

The sweet silver chord that keeps me moored
I know that heaven sent her.

From the cold to hold her face again
I rose from death, the great adventure.