Talk of People Gone

Posted on by Opher

Talk of People Gone

Let us talk of people gone.

Of Lanky, whose gentle ways belied the harsh stab of the needle.

Of Geof who left to meet the train.

Of Tony who shouted loudly that he was still here but isn’t.

Of Danny who took his last taxi ride.

Of Hat for whom it was always straight on.

Of Tony who strode up mountains.

Of Megan who loved Harper too.

Of Paul who talked in cockney rhyme.

Of Graham who held great parties.

Of all companions on a journey to nowhere.

Who tested time

And tasted life.

Who lived and loved

And found eternity.

Who sought rhyme and alliterations in random words

And found the truth.

Let us talk of friends.

Opher 14.12.2025

The older you get the more friends drop out of life into forever and are lost.

They live on in our cherished memories as part of us.

They helped make us who we are.

We are all on this short journey between there and here and over.

Always over.

The in between is so short.

But let us talk of those who are gone and remember with love and fondness.

Rites and ceremonies

Posted on by Opher

37. Rites and ceremonies

Death has always been a big thing. Every culture has its rites and ceremonies – often quite elaborate. We humans are full of our own self-importance. We like to leave a mark.

We only have to look at the pyramids, Sphinx, dolmens, cairns, monuments and that incredible terracotta army. What were they all thinking? Did they somehow believe that they could leave a mark in this world and somehow live forever?

Yes, we all do.

We take our photos, record our videos, paint and write.

I write.

My books will live longer than me but they too will die. Probably pretty quickly.

We cannot escape it and none of us are important enough to live forever, not even the greatest artists or religious leaders. Jesus, Buddha, Confuscious, Picasso, Dali, Murakami, Asimov and Stephen King will all one day be totally forgotten. All their works will have ceased to exist. There will not be a single word, dab of paint or prayer left blowing in the wind.

All gone. Forgotten. Pointless.

Doesn’t stop us though does it?

I still write.

We hate pointless. We defy pointless. We embrace pointless and yet still do it.

We are human.

The Book of DEATH: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Ophe Opher, Goodwin, Opher: 9798294533908: Books

Life and Death

Posted on by Opher

I’ve been working on my Death Diaries book. Here’s a short extract:

What do I think will happen to me once I am dead? Nothing. I expect nothing. I will simply cease to exist, be nowhere, fade into eternity. I will have been a flash, a brief flicker in forever. Even the mightiest, most powerful, are brief unimportant flickers.

I do not expect eternal paradise, reunions, reincarnation, judgement, damnation or any awareness. I will be where I was before I was born; where I go when I drift off into dreamless sleep – nowhere.

It will neither be painful or unpleasant or ecstatic and blissful; it’ll simply not me.

And I’m very relaxed about that. I cherish life. I certainly don’t want to die. I find the thought of death disturbing. I certainly don’t like this ageing process either! I think, as I get nearer, I will reach a point where I want to give up. I shall relax, let go and dissolve into eternity. That’s it. Over.

I imagine there will be some pain and sorrow in the ones I leave behind, but not for me. I will no longer exist.

For a time I will live on. I will be remembered. People who knew me will conjure up their memories. There will be ripples that spread out from my life. But I fool myself if I think I have ever altered anything substantial. That’s vanity. I’ve stopped no wars, discovered no panaceas, not greatly altered any lives. Despite all my efforts in teaching, writing and arguing, my impact has been minimal.

I would have liked more but I think I’m alright with what I’ve done. I don’t think I’ve done a lot of harm.

Life has been fulfilling.

Death makes life all the more. Life is measured in seconds. We live in the moment. I have an urge to fill every second, to strain the pleasure, wonder and fulfilment out of it. Life is experience. That’s all.

Apart from the impact of my life and relationships there is the impact of my artefacts to consider. I shall leave behind ‘things’, things that were either valued parts of my life, possessions or were just passing through. They will be distributed or discarded. Charity shops and the local dump will get their share. Things that meant a lot to me might mean nothing to other people.

My records, CDs and books will be sold, my clothes sent to charity and other things discarded. My family and friends will pick out a few things to remember me by.

I wonder about all the photo albums. Will they be placed in an attic somewhere for a while? Will one or two be brought out and a life picked over? There are so many, too many. My life is well-documented. But of little importance.

Then there are the books. I have a couple of hundred of my own books. They might clutter the kids’ lives for a while. I bet they have good intentions to read them but never actually get round to it.

Never mind. They are of no importance. I will not care one way or anything. I will not get upset. I will not be there.

That’s life.

That’s death.

One Thing

Posted on by Opher

One Thing

It all comes down to one thing;

                A single second;

Nothing more.

The transition

                Between something and nothing:

                                One second:

                                A decision:

                                An action:

                                A wrong turn

And over.

The sweet taste of nectar

Warm glow of ruddy sunset

Caress of lips

Scent of new morning

                                Gone

                                In a second

                                A single second

Melting into the nothing of eternity,

                                Forever

                                And ever

                                And ever

                                Without end

The longest second that ever………….

Opher – 13.1.2025

Life is tenuous. One minute you’re here and then you are not. One second is all it takes. You don’t see it coming. Life goes on and then it stops.

That’s Not Nothing

Posted on by Opher

That’s Not Nothing

Cuddles and hugs with a baby;

All the giggles and smiles.

Young love holding hands,

Kisses and eyes.

The myriad of living things;

The stars,

The sun,

Trees and rivers,

Jungles,

Plains and seas.

The days and weeks,

Months and years,

Birds, lizards, butterflies and bees,

Reds, greens

Blues and yellows.

Notes on the wind,

Caress of a warm breeze.

That’s not nothing.

That’s not nothing!

Opher – 10.12.2024

I could have written a thousand pages. Life, the universe and everything. For 4000 weeks we reside in this wonder. Then it’s gone.

It’s not nothing.

WHAAATTT??

Posted on by Opher

WHAAATTT??

A drama,

                A comedy,

                                A tragedy,

Full of bad actors

Who don’t know their parts,

Ad libbing

                Their way

                                Through the roles.

A childhood,

                A career,

                                A death,

While pretending to understand

Thinking it’s reality.

Opher – 11.12.2024

There are no rules.

There are no reasons.

We cannot create a narrative.

We are going nowhere.

It’s just a 4000 week holiday from eternity.

We call it life.

It has no purpose, no meaning; it just is.

Standing on a ledge

Posted on by Opher

Standing on a ledge

We’re all standing on a narrow ledge.

                Any moment we could fall.

On the edge of an abyss

                Could be at the end of it all.

On the brink of nuclear holocaust.

                We live every single day

As if it was our very last

                As we work, rest and play.

Nothing is at all secure

                Though we pretend it is.

Swerving death every day

                In this game of hit and miss.

We expect every day to repeat

                As if there is no change.

But increment by increment

                We mutate into the strange.

Opher – 2.10.2022

Life is short and fragile. The time when we are young is fleeting. At every turn danger lurks. It’s a wonder anybody lives to old age.

One moment of inattention. One instant of bad luck. One push of a button. One pull of a trigger.

Poetry – Infinity 8 – An instant in time

Posted on by Opher

Life and life only

DSC_0649

That’s all we are – an instant in time – here and gone forever. A necklace of moments strung into some semblance of continuity.

Life is merely about maximising the wonder of each of those moments. We live them, waste them and love them.

Life is what we fill our moments with. I like to fill mine with as much as I can cram in. Life is about doing, being, feeling, loving, wonder and awe.

Even mountains only last a moment.

This is infinity:

Infinity 8 – An instant in time

I am the harbinger of doom

I am the harper of reality

I am the folded paper

I am the greatest strength

The power to wilt

I am Hercules and the Triple Goddess

I am forever and a day

I am Apollo and the great wealth

I am all that defies description

I am the will ‘o the wisp

I am the witches lesson

I am the herb’s power

Only the bard can glimpse my shroud

Opher 1973

I deliberately wrote these without punctuation. I wanted each line to be a meditation. Some of those still work for me. But hey – I was a kid!

Tombs

Posted on by Opher

Tombs

Grey tombs

                of weathered rock

punctuated by

                                Orange patches of lichen.

Upon a hill

In the drizzling rain.

Low clouds obscure the sun

                Enshroud the oblivion of forever.

Of relics abandoned

                In the wake of life;

                                A life spent in the sun’s light.

Confused lives

                Striving towards

                                An unfathomable salvation.

Frozen in scripture,

                In inscriptions,

                                In photographs and stories

Eliciting empathetic understanding

                To illuminate a journey

That ended.

Opher – 28.10.2022

I wrote this on a grey, dismal day while walking through the graveyard in Howarth at the Bronte’s parsonage.

I was reading the inscriptions and thinking about the lives of these people. It felt as if they sacrificed so much for some idea of salvation, of an afterlife.

It felt to me as if real life, this brief flame, was almost relegated to a secondary role. Their hope was for something that lay beyond death.

Yet, life is all we have; this moment. Best to life it to the full. The flame flickers.

Eternity

Posted on by Opher

Eternity

Contemplation of eternity

                Is far beyond the human mind.

So we create gods and paradise

                To guess what we might find.

Eternity is an immensity

                Beyond the wit of man.

Experience in which anything can happen

                From which all situations ran.

Opher 21.10.2022

Religions have the answer to eternity. It’s either eternal life in paradise, eternal life in hell, or reincarnation.

I think it’s sweet oblivion.

Infinity is a strange beast.

What is the answer when there is no question?