This is where I am

This is what I know:
Life is for the living.
The still-walking,
ambling,
that know yet refuse that endings come to all.
The not-yet-dead, who go about the everyday,
who tread ground soon to turn to graves.
The slumbering,
ready to rouse,
to wake,
to rise
tomorrow,
even should the next day’s light
never greet their eyes.
The dawn will come,
moment by moment –
light will shine on
closed eyes
open eyes
eyes of hollow stone
and eyes of empty bone.
To live another moment
is to defy eventuality,
to stare in the face
of the end that must come –
and then
to turn away
pay it no mind
and march onward,
smiling,
living
today.

Here is what I see –
To wake is to be at odds.
With oneself,
with one another,
with the world entire.
Daylight hours spent
with faces buried
six masks deep –
to obfuscate intentions,
contemplate the shallow ideas,
ablate the faintest sincerity –
and create nothing,
nothing
save for empty words
spoken aloud by hollow specters,
walking ever within convention.
To step without is heresy.
But dreams –
it is in dreaming
that we face
the mirror
within,
where there is
no hiding
no shadow
no mask
that can keep
our face
from seeing itself
in the glass.
That sheer silvered surface,
reflecting the light
of a moon unseen,
echoes back
the sentiment unspoken,
the desire unacted,
the canvas unpainted –
it whispers of potential
and of the one
that we are not.
The one
that wishes to be.
The one
that aims –
not higher
but elsewhere,
in a direction that lies
off the map
we have drawn
of our self
entirely.
The one born to
desire,
aspire,
climb higher above the clouds
and the mountains
and the atmosphere
and the stars
and the night.
Meanwhile, we dream.
Content to wake,
And to be less.
To be enough.
To be what is
expected of us –
to covet success,
to find some day-to-day
that’s not too grey, but grey enough –
to spend a life
with those with whom
we are content, not happy –
to end the dream,
to awaken,
to depart
from childhood’s door.
The day comes soon.
Must we wake?

This is what I learn –
ever will I need to be wary
of the traitor within my heart.
So they say.
That which is set before me
on the roads I tread now
and the roads I leave behind
and the roads that wait beyond this mountain –
that is where my heart ought to rest.
So they say.
Yet it deviates
meanders,
yearns elsewhere,
and it takes the whole
of the unwilling self
that is my self
along with it.
So they say.
I must find success tomorrow –
I must thus suffer today.
So they say –
and they say too
that I must ever keep
this traitor in my heart –
or that is my heart –
on a leash short enough to choke,
that it does not depart expectation,
transcend convention,
and leave behind
the work
that is yet to be done
in search of some ephemeral constellation
or ancient face of stone
or crawling insect or sailing falcon
or love or inspiration or joy or indeed anything
but the work.
That which must be done.
This, they say, is the traitor.
I name it only a soul.

And indeed I have known and seen and learned much –
as one must over the course of a life.
Alive.
Awake.
Aware.
I have been each,
as has been asked.
Tell me, then,
if your voice dares to speak it.
What was all this for?
Myself?
I am born of the dying of day.
I am made of the coming dreams.
I take my joy from what is denied.
No.
It is not for me.
There is nothing there
in the place where daytime envelops all
where dreams must be left behind
where to chase joy is to invite ruin.
Not for me.
Not any longer.
And so –
no more
shall I wear
the chain cuffs of convention
or aspire to be hidden,
behind a mask
that covers my face
and renders me
ordinary.
This is my farewell to you,
that which I name now as expectation.
Indeed,
expect nothing more from me,
save that I will see my name
written
in flame
or in ink
or in stone
or in light.
You will find me,
should I wish to be found,
where I want to be.
At the center of a creation all my own.
Regretting none of it,
for there is nothing to regret.
Alive, but among the graves.
Awake, but bringing dreams to life.
Aware – that this is what –
this is who –
this is why I am.
C’est pour cela que je suis né.
I was born for this.
My eyes full with shadows,
hungry still for more –
my soul bursting with music
that sings
and gleams
and echoes ever onward –
my hands burned
down to the bone
from catching the stars.