The Rotting Emblem

We die each day, but some of us are more aware of it than others. I feel death every morning on my shoulders as I draw on waking breaths, every afternoon when I yearn for early evening drinks and then upon reaching those drinks I feel deathly petals curdle me, making me brave but very alone. There are Love and comforts aplenty but morbid slivers still penetrate the happy baubel, there is no safety from stabs of doom.
I feel everything; the crushing wind in my heavy chest, the dim light on the horizon and cramps in my legs as I shuffle from one sleep to another. There is seldom any daylight for me because the day is when I switch off and play the charade of living. A shell afraid to drown in sober pools. I barely function to be honest. The only force I have left is what is allowing me to type the words before you, the only will I have remaining in my spirit.
One shouldn't think that I am sad or in a state of despair, on the contrary I am quite merry for eventhough I feel the rot around my ankles I am comforted in this fog. Hidden. I might show all the pomp of a peacock but I have the heart of a salamander and need dark rivers to hunt and wallow in dying fathoms. I know cursed things. I know of End.
In all these years of some would call a young life, I have held an insatiable hunger for death. Or to be more accurate the final moments when death's mighty bayonet strikes. As a boy I would gleefully kill frogs and birds just to watch the fatal moments, and now as a man I read last words of condemned prisoners and obituaries, soaking up the misery. And until now I did not understand why I had interest in such grim things because certainly I do not delight in it. Im never thrilled by death. But now that I sense dusk falling behind my shoulders I understand; I simply need to to SEE. I want to try and find an answer of what lies beyond the grave by reading the faces of the dying.
Futile I know because whilst going through death rattles the nearly deceased is still in this world and can have no answers but I persist in trying to decipher some kind of answer. Perhaps when one cares this deeply about the End they have almost reached it themselves. And I do feel my veins wilting. No agonies or torment plague me but there lies a dullness in my soul which at times is tough to shrug off. I am stabbed at all angles from liver to my heels and there seems to be no chemical nor prayer to soothe it.
I walk in cemeteries and smile at the stale eulogies. Those gone (but never forgotten) keep me warm and hopeful and I understand their discomfort. There is voice to the departed and grit in the sun yet most are deaf to the stubborn melodies. Cakes and jokes are substance to mortal lips but dust is for the damned. Those damned to see it all.
I feel the sweat of ages fall from my face as I attempt to run through the day but there is never any weight lost from my burden. As my muscles get lighter the more the tomb offers a fancy seduction. Maybe this is not sinking afterall? The footprints before me know the path and just as I am sure of the wine stirring my whiskers, I am also aware of the end of flesh and hours.