Abstracts of Existence

Candle light flickers

In the reflection of crystalline eyes–

The glow of meditated musing

Breathes pencil wisps of peculiar insight,

Curling upwards and out of existence,

Only to return to the ethereal light

As if to form an endless train of thought.

Conversations replay in each cerebral node,

Firing words into electric nothingness

To awaken a nocturnal consciousness

Where belief unearths the fear

Of failing to find truth in the now,

Of uprooting a soul anomaly

Whose origins are too deep to materialize

And too devout to relate to

The regression of humanity,

Our purchased sense of self,

And the simulation of our insecurities.

Spherical oceans search for the nearest tear ducts

As the blue begins to sketch 

Continuums

          In each curve 

                       of 

                       an 

                    iris 

                pulse,

Drawing portraits of the internal

Onto mirrors of human potential.

Illusions begin to dissipate

And the dark divulges the depths of its creation:

Imagination breathes through a body of questions,

Feeling, freeing, remembering

Of love what cannot be understood

Inside illusive formalities –

Parodies of reality

That revel in false sensitivities –

These societal models made visual

To prove to our physical

That love is another market transaction:

A set of benefits

Taken from the pension

Of a slowing heart’s existence;

An incentive for living in the future

When the flaws of the present

Can no longer pretend to sleep

Under feathered retribution

As their pasts keep beating the body into emotion

Instead of releasing it from its own skin–

How fragile all of our hearts have become.

We are taught to survive

In a world of statistics

Where each accomplishment

Fills our measuring cup of self-worth

With accolades of constructed perfection.

We accept ourselves

According to audience applause

And the ways in which we can be loved

Instead of our infinite capacities

Through which we are able to love.

We forget we are more than just skeletons

In soft-shell cover-ups,

More than blood and genetics

And sensory extremities,

More than the emotions

We ascribe to each organ

And our nervous system of excuses.

We are more than texts

And the histories that define us;

More than the products of academia

And the figures that pay our mortgages.

We are more than just an assembly line future –

More than what we give ourselves credit for.

We are more than what we perceive;
We are without of what we perceive,

Yet we fear that what we are not

Will change who we have yet to become.

Descending a mythological metaphor

Where two hearts marry in a cherrywood casket,

The foundations of a better life

Are paved along the walls of graveyard hollows;

6 foot intrusions into nature’s rebirth

Where dirt beds and scripted eulogies

Preserve the fear in tradition.

While a deeper reality exists above

The burial grounds of today’s consensus,

We keep digging for salvation

Instead of breathing it in,

Convinced that destiny lies beneath us

And not within each of us –

How lost all of our hearts have become.

As we place our trust in wealthy hands,

Our love in selective memory,

Our health in tomorrow's technology,

And our futures in timetable deadlines,

We struggle to question

Whether we are living to be

Or living to do.

Each of us holds the answer to truth

But we cannot unlock it

When apathy and ignorance

Make for comfortable bedfellows;

Reach into the heart that was once unbroken,

And revive the love that gives light to the soul –

Awaken the unconscious from this century’s sleep

And begin to see

That life is more than mere existence.