poetry

The sun rises yet again

on a world filled with opportunity.

The eager student packs his bags

while a couple paints their nursery.

Every day, there are things to be learned,

people to influence,

and habits to be changed.

But what is it all for?

Fortune? But our possessions must leave us.

Our memory? But time must erase even Hitler.

Love? Ah perhaps.

Alas, how can I know the sun will rise

yet again.

How do I know this poem I write

isn’t addressed solely to the manifestations of my mind?

A curious thing life is.

Undeciphered by no one

created by an unknown.

What will following ambitions really do,

besides create a different life with the same problems.

Perhaps it is best to bask in the unknown

and not give a single damn whether tomorrow

the sun will rise,

or cease to exist.

Another day, the same question.

“Is this real?”

Helpless in time,

on some universal death march

without breaks or instruction.

Yet the views are quite…

decently spectacular

and the follow marchers are

adequately intriguing.

Yes, the viewer is flawed

and scared

and curious

and most of all

uncertain.

He drinks to numb the thoughts

and smiles to hide the pain.

Yet somehow he is happy,

because deep down he knows,

it won’t get much better than this.

So he carries on

and laughs

and explores

and opens himself to the fellow marchers

because real or not,

this is all he’s got.

A forgotten memory becomes the present

and the world is suddenly

upside down.

The moonlight between the trees

has a frightening familiarity

and that rock is becoming increasingly inquisitive.

The river spits a feeling of remembrance

and the air is void of time.

A demon has spoken thus.

Thoughts swirl down in unison with a nearby whirlpool

as the ego sinks like the sun,

into total darkness.

A choice is presented,

so simple yet cruel

to abandon meaning and rationality

for life without ego.

To be nameless

and unbound from emotion.

To be nothing and everything

all at once.

The door to salvation

or the fruit punch with cyanide.

A leap of faith.

The risk is everything

and the reward is nothing.

Sweet and unadulterated nothing.

When his day was done

he looked to the setting sun

and questioned what his day was for.

the intricate life he had spun

finished only shortly after it had begun

and the spoils of that time were disappointing.

The day passed so slowly and so fast

a morning dream slid out of memory like gas

and the day’s events had faded together.

The man realized that a question needed to be asked

for that day and many like it had passed

without a single moment of happiness.

As the sun set on his day

the man sulked off to bed.

What could have been

raced through his head,

and all he could say

was that he had been played

in his lifelong search

for purpose.

A cloud of darkness glides over the sun

and suddenly, all is uncertain

The patter of raindrops washes away normality

A picnic is ruined and a wilting flower is saved

The edge of a cliff tumbles into a raging river

and the scent of a rabbit is masked from its stalker

Order is forgotten and chaos tyrannizes

The forest sings in glorious harmony

as a colony of ants is drowned.

But alas a beam of sun pierces through the clouds

Earth will never be as it was

yet now beads of water shine brilliantly off the leaves

The process of taking is inherently intertwined with giving

For what would joy be without misery?

Who would the artist be without pain?

Nothing has meaning until certainty is uncertain.

The branch of a tree ends suspiciously

what made it so perfectly?

Although it seems quite unfinished

it describes exactly what a branch should be.

Is there such a thing as an imperfect branch,

a piece of wood that doesn’t deserve to be?

Perhaps the fault lies in the word

for how can six letters capture this form?

This branch has knots quite different from the one next door.

Our language of thought categorizes too easily

what word accounts for the bark ripped hastily

by frequent gusts of wind?

Existence is beyond logical interpretation,

for all things are simply continuations

of the organized chaos that is our world.

We don’t know if things happen for a reason

yet we think there is a perfect pattern of seasons

that rationalizes the randomness of existence.

We are surrounded by the ridiculous

but choose to see familiar frivolousness.

The branch is too much for its name

and we are too much for the world.

It all fades to black,

I’ve won.

18 years of memory produces a horrible realization.

It’s a game

It’s always been a game.

A sequence that is only clear

when it is too late.

What am I?

What was I?

It all closes in,

blackness envelops me.

The last sliver of reality vanishes

as I await an eternity of darkness.

Is this what happens to everyone?

Was there ever an everyone?

Then I feel them,

billions of them

stuck in their own reality

untangibly far away yet so close.

Some are aware of their isolation,

others live their lives in oblivion.

A select few understand.

They reach out to the woken

and share their inner beauty.

It all makes sense for the first time

my life, its purpose, every memory.

But its too late, only darkness awaits.

the most defining moment of my life,

at the end of a sequence.

But maybe not

I wake to a shrill voice.

The world is the same yet everything has changed.