Nursery rhymes for nihilists

Scan 2

The itsy bitsy spider
Went up the waterspout.
Down came the rain and
Washed the spider out.
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain.
And the itsy bitsy spider bitterly repressed the thought
That maybe, just maybe, none of this matters.


This little piggy went to market.
This little piggy stayed home.
This little piggy found fulfillment
in an otherwise cruel and pitiless universe.
This little piggy, after tireless decades of searching, found none.
And this little piggy went
“Wee, wee, wee,”
Cursing the inevitable decay of his corporeal form.

Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
This, like all other worldly tasks, was just another in
a series of pointless steps towards the emptiness of non-existence.
Faced with this, Jack threw himself down the hill,
hoping desperately to end it all.
And Jill came tumbling after.

Little Jack Horner
Sat in the corner,
Eating his Christmas pie;
Understanding that true knowledge is,
by definition, impossible
And that our understanding of reality is merely an unending dream from which death
is the only escape,
He said “What a good boy am I!”


Humpty Dumpty
Sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty
Realized that, in time,
No one would remember him, and everything he had ever said or done would be lost to the indifferent sands of time.
All the King’s horses
And all the King’s men,
Couldn’t put Humpty’s belief in a benevolent and meaningful existence
Together again.

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