---
title: Dying Outside
description: Poem about Hal Finney announcing beginning tracheostomy before dying of ALS.
created: 2009-12-12
modified: 2009-12-12
status: finished
confidence: fiction
css-extension: dropcaps-not dark-mode reader-mode toc-not index
...

<div class="text-center">A poem for [Hal Finney](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bshZiaLefDejvPKuS/dying-outside)</div>

<div class="poem">
He will die outside, he says. \
Flawed flesh betrayed him, \
it has divorced him--- \
for the brain was left him, \
but not the silverware \
nor the limbs nor the car.

So: he will take up \
a brazen hussy, \
tomorrow's Eve, \
a breather-for-him, \
a pisser-for-him.

He will be letters, \
delivered slowly; \
deliberation \
his future watch-word.

He would not leave until he left this world.

I try not to see his mobile flesh, \
how it will sag into eternal rest, \
but what he will see:

endless plans for a \
mind forever voyaging \
on strange seas of thought
</div>