The desire to be good.

Not successful necessarily,

but to be honorable,

kind,

understanding.

That’s what counts.

Right?

I do wish to be good,

but the heart and the flesh

want what they want,

and the ego,

dear Lord the ego…

So powerful and sure,

massive and uncontained.

And yet its gossamer shell

so easily bruised.

Ostensibly spurring one towards excellence and glory,

but really only ensuring that you are forever, the ultimate preening boob.

Ah yes, to kill it then!

To kill the ego,

winnow it down,

wrangle the unbridled.

But whom could tackle such a feat??

Only the egotist megalomaniac my friend. The irony.

So as I attempt to slay that which drives me, ever careful not to slow my pursuit, forever chasing my tail, and I comfort myself (or try to anyway) in believing it’s the thought that counts.

Write a poem

my brother said.

About your life

your fears, your dread.

Purge all the thoughts

within your head.

Write a poem

my brother said.

So I take to pen and paper now,

and ponder deeply,

wonder how,

to best describe my narrative,

the thoughts that in my head do swim.

I cast about and fail to find,

a composition to please the mind,

I turn instead and feel I might,

be satisfied to just plain write.

The bluejay sharpens his beak on an old fence. Anticipation of a meal.

Fat carpenter bees bumping their way along. Small spiders running for their own lives, yet still manage to make me momentarily nervous.

Train horns and sirens. Pieces of conversations, and overhead jets.

What an amazing piece of music. A fugue worthy of Johann. No matter how many times I listen, it never grows old.

Leftover coffee,

Still in the pot.

The light is off,

But it’s still hot.

Some things are missing,

And some things you got,

Leftover coffee,

In my pot.

I can hear the background radiation.

I can feel the cosmic rays traverse through me, as though I did not exist.

Tyson tells me it was all in a pinprick. I have no reason to doubt.

However far away I am from what it is I seek, I must have been closer then.

Since, and I’ll grant you, it’s been some time. I have lost touch. Forgotten. Grown weary from the search.

And I can’t help but wonder if what passes for wisdom in old age isn’t just a lack of energy.

He’s wiser, he’s beyond that.

He’s old, he no longer wants to fight.

Either way, it’s won. Again.

I imagine it will continue to do so.

Evade me. Near and yet so far.

It surrounds me but I possess it not.

You’re never going to know

who did it.

You will never know who to trust.

You’ll never know where you put that thing,

The mystery will follow you to dust.

You will never find out about aliens,

or know the mind of God.

You will die in ignorant obscurity,

a question mark in the sod.

I swim in a different medium.

Motivations are the same.

I toil in quiet tedium,

Ask the world to know my name.

On every level, in every world,

Where dreams are dashed and chaos swirls, I am attendant, I am there,

We all bear witness, we all are heir.

Isn’t it something that we should exist in the world at the same time?

Out of all the creatures that have lived, or will live, we, are together here now.

That should count for a certain brotherhood amongst us, que no?

Classmates of the post-industrial era.

But here we are, gnashing our teeth, too absorbed in internecine rivalries to notice the world is burning around us.

Brother against brother, as the Universe collectively shakes its head in disappointment.

Every once in awhile, as I look up from the fray, I gaze out over the chaos and see another looking about, a countenance of sadness on their face.

Soon, I hope, we will be legion, and our numbers great enough to band together and finally quiet the awful din of ignorance and hate that has too long now reigned.

I raise my hand, so that you see that I see. I signal to my rational brethren that, “here is another!”

Slowly, lovingly, painstakingly, we will gather.

As I bob about the cosmological soup,

a one-legged amoeba circling a tiny corner of the Petri,

I entertain myself with ideas of potency and purchase.

I catch echoes of myself in the aether

and recognize my own operating system running in the background.

The search for Self has produced nothing but, and I marvel at my immenseness.

Finding neither comfort nor fear I return to contemplating the mundane, and prefer not to engage the loneliness that has been revealed.