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It All Came Out Alright In The End

Audio for Poem

Text of Poem

• Past things get portioned out, broken in
• Chunks that you swallow up, just so.
• Stories with endings and arcs,
• Neatly drawn. But, those you live...


• Those come and those come, for days and then
• Months and then years and then always.
• New things emerge as you live,
• Never with knowing what's next.


• Read of the past, and the writers with
• Soothing and lies tell you, "This all
• Came out alright in the end."
• Live it, though—when is "the end"?


• We who now weep, will we see it? And
• Those who will not? Because oh, yes,
• Death does come. "Came out alright."
• —who? "In the end" does not soothe.


• Empty out graves with that "end", if you
• Can. Do you think we forget them?
• We will survive, won't survive.
• That's what we live, and we mourn.