Nothing There

What if you looked inside and there was nothing there,
No one looking back when you stared,
And when you scanned around your room it was mostly nothing too
With some furniture to enhance the absence,
And out the windows you saw trees, plants and grass
Decorating a garden that now wavered a bit in what wasn’t ?
How would that make you feel?

Let’s say you looked at your hand tapping on a keyboard and saw it was no longer yours.
Just a gesture, with the fingers bent a bit as the index touched the key,
In space that extended throughout the universe.

And what if the space didn’t exist either
And it was just a metaphor for a greater nonexistence,
Just a transparent mask that hid What was really not there
And leered a bit about its trick?

Well, if there is something, there must be nothing, right?
But what if something is nothing,
And the nothing is completely empty of even being nothing?
How could there still be a shrine with a gold satin covering and candles in the room,
Dedicated to that very understanding?

Who would ever want to know such things, much less become them?
What benefit could possibly accrue from all this nothingness now devolved into complete, utter, nonexistence.
How could what cannot be seen, heard, tasted or smelled be worthy of a lifetime of pursuit?
And how could complete nonexistence even be known?

Well, you’ll have to take it from a corpse filled with nonexistence that knows,
That nothing can be felt, and believe it or not the feeling is exquisite.
The fear of being extinguished is how many feel about it
But what it, or not it, actually engenders is quite different.
For example, there is the freedom of not existing,
Like being everywhere along with the restfulness of having to go nowhere.
Sort of like virtual reality, but without a view.

Or like carrying a bucket full of water,
Where the water is all the things that support the sense of something,
And the bottom falls out and the something is suddenly gone
Leaving nothing and the sudden lightness of relief and release.

And how lovely, when there is nothing there to care,
But an absence being its impassive self,
Reserved to the extreme, never intrusive, or making demands,
A friend that never disappoints and never leaves, even when we die.

Total absence is often understood
As a loss and never as the greatest good,
A bottomless abyss where everything is amiss
No light, no purchase, and desperate loneliness,
When in fact nothing equals the pleasure
Of being nothing there.