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This is my first real attempt to write a meaningful poem (as opposed to stupid ones i was forced to write in english classes). It kind of relates to the two earlier essays on my new self image and emptiness. Currently, it's untitled, but if anybody has any suggestions, feel free to let me know.
7-29-00
Falling
Into the emptiness.
But it is not cold and dark,
It is not lonely.
That was my tunnel,
Where I've spent most of this lifetime
Surrounded by all the things I filled my life with.
Pushed along by a deafening torrent of thoughts.
"Where am I going to school?"
"When am I going to get a job?"
"Do I really like her in that way?"
"Can I really trust him with this?"
Then there is a window
Every once in a while
I glance for a brief moment into the infinite...
Darkness.
I am back in my tunnel.
The thoughts are as deafening as ever:
"What is real?"
"What is the nature of God?"
"Do we have a purpose here?"
Suddenly, it all stops.
Weightless
I float in an endless sea of sky.
Empty of all describable things,
Overflowing with indescribable beauty.
Pure and Perfect...
Yet I must return to humanity,
For this is not death.
This is life at its highest level.
But they know nothing of it.
They all walk around in a daze.
Getting money
Becoming successful
Accumulating things they're too busy to even notice they have.
They think this is what's important.
They think the purpose of life
Is to get
Knowledge,
Education, Acquaintances,
Money and Success and Fame.
Will they ever see the windows in their own tunnels?
Will they have a chance to see
Before it's too late?
Before all their accumulated things
Are exposed
As the useless trinkets that they are?
Before they are forced to look
Directly into the face of infinity?
Unprepared by anything learned in life
To face it's most basic aspect:
Death
Will they ever know
What it's like
To be free?
Later on 7-29-00
Before I wrote this at 4:15 this morning, I was just laying in bed thinking of the words. I've recently found that in regards to both music and poetry, thoughts come into my head while I'm drifting off to sleep that are much better than what I can think of while fully awake. When I got to the part about floating in a sea of sky, I suddenly felt nothing. The bed below and the sheets above were gone. The rain at the window seemed more and more distant. There was just me and the emptiness. No thoughts at all, except for the occasional image along with a few words at a time of the forming poem. So far, that is the closest I've been able to get to being only in the here and now. Acutely aware of what was around me without having to think about how it actually sounded or felt. When I ended up writing that part, I changed it a bit from what I experienced to make the narrator (not precisely myself in this case) return from nirvana, as it were, in order to see how truly empty everybody's life is, as they fill it with things they believe to have meaning and substance. In my dream, or whatever it was, I saw people only through their threads of consciousness while still in the state of nirvana, an image which is much harder to describe in words. I decided that the meaning I wanted to get across was more important than the images involved, so I changed it a bit. Of course, it was my vision anyway, and I can do with it whatever I like. |
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