Paint on a genuine smile, rehearsed
Drilled…
Day to day, for days on end
‘Til every day is day-ja-vu
And facial contortions are no longer
An expression of the inner soul
But a plastered-on artistic endeavor
Summoned at will.
In solitude the actor peals off his make-up
And stares in the mirror at Cold, Harsh Reality
Not “genuine” at all
And he realizes
He has become accustomed to his Costume.
Some ilk of biliousness, cascading
Plunging
Spraying omnipotent specks of a pernicious bacterium
Enough to churn the insides of one’s pneuma…
I had the most tenacious impetus to purge.
Some kind of toxicant skulked
Like a small omnivorous canid…
Imbuing the popular psyche.
Shelter. What I’ve found
Tangled in the offset timing of truth
Its blunt inconvenience plain in view.
Peace, when at last found,
Nothing like emptiness -
But pure and whole in silence.
Floating within all this chaos
I plant myself on an island sanctuary -
Moments of solace permeate my skin,
My scars pale and fade in tingling sensations.
Faith gropes now for validation; once spoiled sour
Stifled under the incredulous reprimand of skepticism
And now untethered on an islet of refuge.
Trust runs free.
Lonely, lonely, I tickle the keys with my aching fingertips
How did I amount to this?
Wandering through empty days of distanced silence
I am floating in a sensationless vortex
I can’t decide if I’m meant for this.
Life wasn’t always so vacant - or was it?
I’ve been shifting, shifting through stages and levels
But maybe it’s just misfiring neurons astray in my head.
And now I’m the Deconstructionist
Uncovering all the favored meanings and deceptions;
Each word, each thought, it really could mean anything.
A word could be truthful or sarcastic,
Literal or metaphorical,
But our perception will choose as our predispositions are inclined.
So I am sitting lowly, lonely
Wondering if I amount to this?
Such a drastic, bombastic change
It doesn’t seem real, but it must be.
But then again even the pigments
Are figments of our own occipital perceptions
And maybe so
Is this darkness I see.
Well I can’t seem to focus -
Amidst all the goings-on and distractions
Everything seems more interesting
Then what I’m supposed to be doing.
Throwing down the books and useless devices of study
I give
My brain
A break.
Why should I be limited to the confines of a formal education
When outside abounds an endless sea of knowledge
Limited only by our own strength of perception?
My hands
Grope
For the door
And i break through to the liberating paradise
That lies without the conformation of standard society.
An eagle flies and I am enlightened to
The insurmountable value of freedom.
And here, the meaning of countless hours
Spent computing a graphing calculator in physics class
Falls to nothingness.
Truth reigns in a moment of freedom -
And one realizes
That learning is learnt best
Along the path of one’s own journey.
And so I departed.
