Across the pond the willow tree
in gentle swaying majesty
tosses her lengthy locks of hair
in the breeze that sings through the morning air.
She fixes a bird on her head like a pin,
and, when the water is still as a glass, gazes in.
Then, lest she should err, I wander around
to the shore where she stands on the uneven ground
and tell her such measures are not to be borne,
for the willow tree’s beauty looks best unadorned.
There is nothing –
in this house –
I want –
to do.
We move –
to the beat of music and of urban sounds,
with the formless bustling of a thronging heard
and to the steady surging of the clock
that chaos made and humans bridled for their own –
we move
with confidence wherever we go
by every means we can devise
that this noise us from nature has excused,
with hardly glance toward the encompassing sky.
What does it mean to own a thing?
To have a rightful claim to it
which the consensus ratifies?
To create, deserve, or control something?
Do these words belong to me,
that came from my unconscious mind
and are not kept, but spread abroad?
I cannot say who now will read them,
nor change what their effect will be:
they have gotten already away from me.
Thus it is with life and words,
with feelings, thoughts, and actions:
we only own what we own no longer –
by claim of memories.
They walk around like animated corpses,
eyes glazed, feet moving them automatically onward, hungry,
toward individual destiny.
Eyes on their phones,
buds in their ears, connected, and
completely unconnected.
Each one of them knows they are the exception.
The only exception.
This they know better than anything,
This they know regardless and
in spite of what they learn or do in life.
This they have been taught above all else,
in classes, movies, and sacred text,
on billboards, on websites, and in the stars;
this alone they believe:
“You are special.”
“You are different.”
“You
will change the world.”
And so they wander, starving corpses,
without purpose, feasting always
on the empty promise of immortality
dangling ever before them on a string
that hangs from their ears, meets at the chin,
and plugs in to their phone.
I love they way your eyes turn up
on either side when you smile.
They do the same for everyone, I’m sure,
but yours are the only ones that infect me.
And when you fix your hair,
and ask me how you look,
and smile in the way you do
I simply cannot help myself –
and then I smile too.
My task is not to give you
the answers of the soul
but to plant in you the questions
you must answer on your own.
We are not the finished product
of a past to which we slave
but a deciding factor
of the product of the grave.
I’m but a little flame
flickering in the night
a warm and hopeful yellow,
casting dull shadows on the walls
Igniting what experience
and reflection impart to me;
and every “like”
every comment
every subscription
is fuel for the fire
of my existence.
Because of you
I will one day burn
in the hearts of millions.
Packets of truth
eloquently stated,
in definite form
or indefinite,
produce a fleeting feeling
of connection,
of epiphany,
of truth,
in the minds of those
who read and linger
or move on.
Sam Bartholomew's Writing Blog 