The Risen By Rich Ryfe.

Is it funny? Is dyin funny? Should anyone laugh at dyin'?
Hell yeah.  Death is a reality if you think it is.
But if you know death is a momentary change
in the endless flight of soul then,
it don't mean shit.
If you know death is the end of one life
and the beginning of another
then it don't mean shit.
Sacrilegious? Sure.  Arrogant? Fuckin right.
Not fearing death renders a major weapon mute,
flat.  Ineffective.
Fear of death has bludgeoned us
for most of our lives.
Fear of death has been a way to confine us,
retard us, force us to quake and quiver, and beg:
"Yayas massa, you the boss massa, I be nobody Massa.
God knows it takes the uppity soul of an ethereal
Nigga to preach death be not proud.
and it cannot be. Because it takes you from
one place to another over and over again.
Nothing proud in that. Nothing Noble. Nothing illuminating.
Just repetition belying the paucity of gloomy imagination
huddled in the lumpy flesh that serve as vessels.
Death don't mean shit.
When you've seen it, heard it, let it take all you know,
it stumbles like the black face clown, perplexed, unemployed,
empty- handed and forgotten...
Which is why the risen, laugh in its face.
 

Silently without a ripple

she slides into the lastre of the water

until her hair fans out upon

a reflection of stars.

Arms stretch feet flutter

as

she swims to the limit of her fathom

and

almost disappears.

She 

slowly returns 

dressed only in dampness

and

 wrings her hair upon a log strewn beach.