How Does This Sound?

[Rhondazvous]

You don't need to pay me, as long as you attribute it to "Brian James Rational Poet, AKA Brian37 of Rational Responders". And while I am giving you permission to publish these three, I retain all rights to my work. Donate the money to your favorite charity.

I would like to remain anonymous so no bio or photo. 

I will say that I got my start at a local Poetry group in Northern Va, have been writing since the late 80s. 

"The Illusion" is pretty easy I think to understand. I am basically saying that everyone dies, and there is no afterlife, but you can still value the here and now and find love and joy while you are alive.

"Ego Divinely Inspired", I wrote after 9/11. It is about how religion can lead to violence. My views have changed since writing that. I STILL believe in the good in my fellow humans. I wrote it while attending a Unitarian Church, full of not only Christians but a couple of Muslims, a Buddhist, Pagan, and 3 atheists, two of them, not me, former military.
I have grown since to be more skeptical of all religions. I still however value the message of non violence in that poem.

"Don't Say Goodbye", is a poem about my mothers health decline and eventual death. The game depicted in the poem started after she had an operation, when at first we thought she would just have therapy  and we thought she would recover, but ended up being told by therapy she would not be able to live on her own again, so she ended up staying long term care. We still thought at that point she was ok, but her operation ended up getting re infected, and at that point she decided not to go any further with treatment. The game started at her nursing home as my silly way of saying goodbye and that I would see her tomorrow.

So let it be written. So let it be done.