fear of death (and after)

for the over 70s

a thirteen-course poem by hugo brucciani

featuring Roy Batty as Gilgamesh

menu <<

abcb rhyming starter

too young <<

at 35 the bard observed the dread of something after death

at 33 Thomas told his dying dad to rage

at 55 Larkin leaked his early-morning funk

all too young for the animal fear and the need to act your age

dementia <<

dementia shuffles in the wings
fear of death before the end
but that’s another story
a different ear to bend

fear of death <<

life’s a bowl of cherries
it’s also a bowl of crap
it’s a cabaret, a revolving door
a way marked on a map
but after threescore years and ten
the end is feeling real
and whatever life is, you want more
to stem the fear you feel

acceptance <<

you want more life you greedy git
your lust for life’s a bit obscene
death is coming – let it come
blame it on the selfish gene
Nature let you live this long
to hand on what you know
now act your age, turn the page
let it go
follow your breath, remember Death
will need no invitation
but what comes next, you might well ask
to aid your meditation

free-verse main

so what comes next? <<

what comes next?
you might well ask
nothing

says the devout atheist

something

i don’t know

says the smug agnostic

no one really knows
which should put nothing in the lead
but many near-death daytrippers say
there’s something coming next
if consciousness is the producer
not the product
my money’s on something to win

something <<

if there’s something after death
will it be something good
or will it be something bad?
a Heaven of wonderful meaning
or a Hell of meaningless dreams?
i pray to Om for meaning
meaning meaning after death
but Great God Om is silent
in his misty mountain mansion
in the land of manifest myths
he’s on a toilet break, the total fake
my unanswered prayer
goes drifting into space
i can only speculate

dreaming <<

it might be dreaming after death
there’s the rub – what dreams may come
my living dreams are confused
unhappy and meaningless
i fear eternity of that
i add to my my to-do list
practice lucid dreaming
as i lay me down to sleep
i pray my dreams be clear and sweet

or – judgement <<

on my day of judgement
at the crossroads
with St Peter, the Devil and Robert Johnson
a ghostly AI does the dirty work
sifting swiftly through my life
the result isn’t great
what d’you say? says Johnson
in a kindly kind of way
i say i’m sorry
for not making the most of it
and being a shit sometimes
it wasn’t my fault, give me a break, i whine
then pulling what’s left of myself together
i say, whatever, do it
and my judged afterlife begins

hey ho

or – quantumness <<

so obviously the multiverse
being made of consciousness
and everything being an illusion, kind of
and my consciousness being
a durable construct of quantum reality
i survive death
with a body made of quantum magic
mine but young and healthy
i see the light, dead friends and relatives
maybe Baby Jesus and Santa Claus
another illusion? perhaps
but it’s better than instant nothing

isn’t it?

quant 1 <
reincarnation <<

after a while,
in the reincarnation unit
surrounded by the spirits of
my surviving loved ones (if any)
and maybe an angel or two,
my soul is stripped down
to its unique quantum core
and reborn according to
the karmic algorithm
it’s for my own good
apparently

goodbye! hello!
again

quant 2 <
reabsorption <<

after many lifetimes
I’m in the reabsorption unit
watched by angels
i dissolve into the ocean of quant
it’s my reward: oneness
thanks for nothing

bye bye
byee…….

quant 3 <
or – freedom! <<

alternatively
after a (short) while
i join a rebel group
and we escape from Heaven
in a scifi-action-movie kind of way
(pursued by an avenging angel
whom we ambush and convert to our cause)
we roam the quantum multiverse
on our quest for cosmic justice
like Roy Batty and Gilgamesh
we’re going to meet our maker
and demand an explanation

whoopee!

(resenting his limited lifespan,
replicant Batty killed his maker
humans have the same grievance
but that might be going too far)

or – nothing <<

brain shuts down, mind fades fast
never mind, i think
it was never going to

one-line desert

sweet dreams <<

(if available)

the end <<<

(as it were)

Editors’s note | December 2025
This poem was recently smuggled out of a high-security institute for the criminally insane in the Austrian Alps where Brucciani is currently detained, having allegedly run amok after accidentally overdosing on cocaine whilst poet in residence at the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna. Brucciani is said to have accidentally found Freud’s secret stash of high-purity, hermetically sealed coke, hidden by a zealous conservator. No one was injured but the museum was badly damaged. Bruccianni’s detention was ordered by a panel of judges at a closed hearing. The incident was hushed up by the Viennese tourist board. The Society of Poets is thought to be organising a rescue mission.

The dark side of the Enlightenment

Decolonise this

I’ve always greatly respected the Enlightenment, the European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries led by philosophers such as Descartes, Locke, Newton, Kant, Goethe, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Adam Smith.

(I’ve read about their ideas…)

The Enlightenment emphasised reason. I’d looked up to it as a way out of superstition, ignorance and oppression, and as the foundation of modern liberal democracy.

However, the global Black Lives Matter moment exposed the part played by Enlightenment philosophers in justifying the slave trade and slavery by coming up with the idea of white supremacy.

I didn’t know, for instance, that Immanuel Kant said, ‘humanity is at its greatest perfection in the race of the whites’. To be fair, he apparently later recanted (re-Kanted?), kind of, but the damage was done.

Kant (the preacher of moral egalitarianism!) expounded at length about the failings of the various ‘races’ as compared with the perfect whites. He said black people were stupid. He babbled authoritatively about the qualities of different African ‘races’ in terms of their suitability as slaves.

Such ‘philosophy’ was extremely useful to slave traders and ‘owners’ – not in practical terms, but in terms of moral support for their inhuman enterprise.

Now we know about the Enlightenment’s dark side, and in the woke wake of that awareness students have – understandably – called for decolonisation of the university syllabus. (The Daily Mail‘s response: ‘They Kant be serious!’)

In defence of the Enlightenment, it’s said that Kant & co. were conservative, and we should look to lesser-known radical philosophers of the Enlightenment – Baruch Spinoza, for instance – for its heart and soul.

Maybe so, but those mainstream conservative Enlightenment philosophers built our foundations – which now feel shaky.

Luckily – switch of metaphor! – the fruit of the Enlightenment, liberal democracy (currently the worst form of government apart from all the others) seems not fundamentally poisoned by this racist root. So I’ll still praise the Enlightenment – but less wholeheartedly.

The poison wasn’t Enlightenment philosophy – it was colonialism. It’d be nice to think those two heavyweight phenomena – Enlightenment and colonialism – were fundamentally separate and coincidental, rather than horribly symbiotic.

We need to decolonise our democracy but it’s easier said than done. Having ripped off and destroyed colonial countries, the UK blithely invited large numbers of residents of those countries to move and live here to help rebuild postwar Britain – then blighted their lives with postcolonial racism.

As I argue elsewhere, colonial racism is apparently a twisted version of a redundant anti-stranger instinct (evolved to protect against communicable disease).

If we acknowledge that, we can choose to live above it (as with other ‘monsters from the id‘), so enabling us to oppose and end racism and to decolonise our minds – and our institutions.

This post is an edited excerpt from my longform post Racism explained as a redundant instinct

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God is a mixed metaphor

**Creationism** *Painting: Michelangelo*

God is a mixed metaphor
Do you know what He is for?
Religion is a form of art
Totality made up from parts of
Goodness, wisdom, power, love
Authority from up above
He’s been dead two hundred years
Poisoned by our hopes and fears

Life is a revolving door
Do you know what it is for?
Philosophy? Ah nah nah nah
Just put you hand upon your car
And swear you will be true to those
Who lie in wait, half comatose
We’ve been stoned two hundred years
We know all your hopes and fears

I bring the wisdom of the seer
I know the truth is scary
I keep the faith, I tell no lie
I am the soothfairy
I stand here on the corner
I stand here on my box
Let me tell you what the time is
Tick tick tick tick tox

Love’s a theatre of war
Do you know what it is for?
DNA is cupid’s bow
Romeo was stupid so
It’s all a game of love and hate
The heart wants what it wants but wait
For love you cry a lake of tears
Full of all your hopes and fears

Death is there upon the shore
Do you know what it is for?
Survival, that’s what you desire
Can you hear the angel’s choir
Singing you to kingdom come
Say your prayers, call your mum
St Peter sees your great ideas
He knows all your hopes and fears

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Tag: Philosophy

fear of death (and after)

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The dark side of the Enlightenment

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God is a mixed metaphor

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