The Emptiness and Voids

The passing of one's birthday
and the forfeit of another year, holding
on with every rollicking memory that passes 
through the narrowing and gathering reprise,
and the endless sequence of fallen aspirations
besiege every thought that fracture one's pride,
misery accompanied by her twin despair probe
every repressed reprieve, this stranger intrudes 
upon the lonesome night and awakens every 
memorial death like some notary exhumer 
who wrought the dead to life only to welcome the
relived anguish of etherized anfractuous grief, 
for, in the end, there's no rebirth from an emaciated 
and embowered grave; for eternity, only exists through 
some gilded book on a lonely shelf, an open portrait hung
upon some stark folding wall, and with your family and
friends' minds that soon will expire too. 

- John Hardesty