While reading a collection of Tom Wayman’s poetry, suddenly a poem came to me about Hal Finney (“Dying Outside”); since we’re contributing poems, I don’t feel quite so self-conscious. Here goes:
He will die outside, he says.
Flawed flesh betrayed him,
it has divorced him -
for the brain was left him,
but not the silverware
nor the limbs nor the car.
So he will take up
a brazen hussy,
tomorrow's eve,
a breather-for-him,
a pisser-for-him.
He will be letters,
delivered slowly;
deliberation
his future watch-word.
He would not leave until he left this world.
I try not to see his mobile flesh,
how it will sag into eternal rest,
but what he will see:
symbol and symbol, in their endless braids,
and with them, spread over strange seas of thought
mind (not body), forever voyaging.
While reading a collection of Tom Wayman’s poetry, suddenly a poem came to me about Hal Finney (“Dying Outside”); since we’re contributing poems, I don’t feel quite so self-conscious. Here goes:
http://www.gwern.net/fiction/Dying%20Outside