Sweet Oblivion

Sweet Oblivion, master and creator of my fate

it’s you I’m seeking, it’s you who’s been seeking me

it’s you I’ve been communing with for a lifetime.

your gentle creative blackness from which I come

you are the origin me and the golden poppy have in common

you are the arbiter of all life and all suffering:

you are a silent stately procession of clouds in the sky

you are Henry VIII’s fading story taught to school children in England

the open space containing all of existence.

the great judge who refuses to pass judgment on no one:

all returned to the pot, mixed again in Oblivion.

sweet Oblivion, great eternal cosmic stew of nothing

my entire life becomes a bad excuse for this moment

in which I love every single infinity of existence.

so why even bother making enemies with a spider?

microscopic bacteria eating my intestines, here I salute you

don’t take it personally later when I try to kill you

I won’t take it personally, in the end, when you kill me instead.

Song of Oblivion, these are the words you give me?

I hear your rhythm pat-pattering steady as raindrops.

beauty arising from indescribable rhythm.

every song I write is with you envisioned,

Oblivion, the bridegroom I rejoin every evening,

I seek you eternally in my waking and dreaming—

sunshine falls like golden raisins leaking from eyes of eternity

does Buddha help at all in his garden-statue wisdom?

maybe Mother Mary adorned with shells of seastrand…

barnacled as any pre-Christian dread of Poseidon.

wooden David disintegrates on the winds of Oblivion,

Michelangelo, does your shade feel vindicated in the slightest?

utter freedom dissolving into non-existence.

I wish I had died yesterday or would be born tomorrow,

for until I get there, I know I’ll never be peaceful.

truth is, I’ve lived all this before and you know it,

and in the moment you know, eternity ripples—

it’s the waves that always make something in darkness.

Watch the Video

Written poem first published in Modern Literature, 2022. Read in Modern Literature→ 

Video poem first published in Rush Magazine, 2025. Read in Rush Magazine→