narrative

We are shaped

by the pressures, expectations,

definitions within which

we grow.

Even when we accept objective evidence,

interpretations encode what we know.

Tell me your truth.

I may accept, suspect, deflect, reject.

How are we to meet, to speak

bare of swords, of skewers?

What is mine, what is yours,

denies that all is ours,

and not ours – that we, you and me,

are not what matters.

And yet, of course to us,

is all that matters.

Is there an answer? (or nest of answers)

What is the question?

What is our quest,

if we allow ourselves that story?

World Viewer

So he told me

it was like a wheel.

Each spoke held a special

memory, an occasion that

would not quietly fade.

A memory with which to while

dead time, make it less than,

more than real.

Locked away, alone.

Physically there is no torture,

not even discomfort.

But what to do, how to behave?

No one to scold or contradict.

No one to hear or listen, to

play against as friends, to share

the chores of explaining our world

into being.

This world I imagine, develop

its contours within my inner eyes.

I explain my world’s many layers,

massive geologies, pretty associations

becoming ecologies.  Over condensed,

imaginary  eons, populations

of sentience evolve.  I scope in on

individual psyches.

I intuit their reasons and yearnings.

I listen to their anxieties and dreams.

I have found my vocation,

world viewer, thought spun into

alchemists’ gold.