Humanity’s Reflection

Staring down the winding road ahead, I catch a glimpse of a new moon.

Awaiting the seating of the sun, the westward glow of dusk sets my path ablaze, as the darkness consumes my world.

The protuberant shadows leer at the light

I hide,

try to get past the rays, away, but fail. I stay to watch, the horizon is my destiny, riddled in faded purpose. Midnights glow pales in comparison, this midsummer’s ambiance

Jeers at me to “Stay,” 

he beckons with a crooked finger to seize what little control I have left. Stuck yet willing, cursed yet blessed as I stared into the master’s face. My gaze never leaving his, as my feet drag at each step. My body free, but my soul is trapped as my mind wonders in the eternal absurdity of my inanity

I, remember the red dress I wore on Friday night, Awaiting the witching hour, wasting no time standing on the steps to the ballroom. It, was supposed to be a night to remember,

Fine fanned out into the stretches of the soul, caned, one night with the king.

You know, it never quite works out like that. Like the gyre of red wine wispy in crystal, entering in entropy,

things

fall

apart

Things drip, ooze and evaporate as though they never existed. And I am always here and never there. Never high enough, never strong enough and never wise enough to reach those gates of Perfection and to bathe in the light of dawn once more.

Instead

I am always covered in gold, gilded like five cent tin. I chase after the sun but like the night I am only allowed a few moments to kiss its rays

A few moments to caress

its sin,

Its skin, glowing glazed, pulsating, waiting for that one tantalizing touch.

This is too much.

Too much civilization, too much life, lilting at the edge of my tongue,

Blinding, gliding, trying

to hold on to the past.

When the future is right beyond the door, at the cusp of the stair, mooned and deadpanned, full of flair, there darkening in the haze, was me.

There beyond the shadows was me, my very essence. How far have I fallen to be able to look up into the darkness of my abyss and see not Dante or Virgil but my own supercilious grin?

The light no longer the sun and its rays no longer warm. My mirage has faded away and I am forced to realize my ignorance and my blindness.

Since the beginning of my existence I have been chasing a reflection, a shadow of the ideal, a cave. A cave, blank and dank, darkened and delved into nothingness.

I have been chasing a reflection of light, not frightened, but refracted.

Fleeting.

Deep, in this cave, in this hole, this darkness, there was a wish, I once had.

To be something, someone, sun swept, wind kissed.

But me? This? Who is it?

Who am I to the smaller eye that cannot see very well? To the train cars stretched with purpose. One acquainted with the day? One accustomed to the light? Or a darkened spirit, hulking at the corners of rocks and hardened hearts, cafeéd and moon-landed in discrepancy.

Who am I, I ask?

Who am I to question the ontological argument? Who am I to refute my purpose and to express my individuality?

Where had my reality gone wrong?

Who cares about such a tautology of thought that only seems to create an infinite regression to my already absurd thoughts and aspirations? I have lost my sun.

I have lost my ability to ascend to perfection because I have accepted my humanity.

Accepted that I am not Nietzsche's Ubermensch nor am I Plato's epitome of Good, I revel in my sensations and tip toe through tulips refusing to look for the light again,  refusing to be inauthentic and refusing to be a part of the herd.

Refusing to be nothing,

But the Republic.

Nothing but sought after grace. Nothing but the allegorical copper, the desensitizing silver, the stagnated gold.

Statuesque.

Alone and complete, tributed like David, like treachery, like the mist, mapped and post modernized, I have become a page.

Cantered and canonized, caught, colloquialized to two:

One for heart and the other for painting.

You see, when the tabula came, I declared no blankness, no slate, just an easel tipped in crimson and a touch of bitter blue. A touch of sanity in this revolving world that never seems to stop.

Now is the time to raise my voice, but like so many before me I have been muted by the static of life's distractions and silenced by my own confusion.

I sit here wallowing in my own pity and like Adam and Eve, realizing my mistake in biting the apple instead of making a Great Leap of Faith. Instead of trusting in my own authenticity I have run toward my doom and I am cursed, like Judas to be feasted upon by the shadows without even the relief of a scream.

My days have turned to nights, and my nights to a sea of dauntless aspirations, that are merely the taunts of my imagination.

Now,

I am left staring down the winding road ahead, waiting, staring into the abyss;

Me. Staring into myself, introspecting image upon image, upon face upon light, upon mind, upon nowhere.

I can go nowhere anymore, become nothing anymore, search for nothing any more, but where the heart flies, where the lilies lilt and wilt in the wandering breeze. To where the duvetted and corseted braziers bit at my bodice, I realize, now, that the reflection of my waist warrants nothing but an averted eyelash, snapped, changed, turned to my mind,

I see, no longer myself.

But collectivity, anonymity, I see only

else,

Prostrated upon an altar, martyred, tossed, crossed

I see only sacrifice.

The sacrifices of my brothers as their souls hover above me. They are never content with their current state always aspiring for more. They grasp for their lives, for their perfect dreams and the topsy-turvy world they left behind, and the ever changing world that brought such nostalgia to the stagnant lives of the lost.

Opening the mind to the unreal to the physical,

but never fully accepting the definite ending of our capacity

for love,

for life,

for light,

a refraction upon a stone, a shadow upon pavement, upon face, upon us

a reflection.