No use in saying
what won’t
be understood.
After all,
how many times
must the experiment
be run?
How many
times must the
confirmation of
vacancy
distrust
misunderstanding
and rejection
be faced
before the soul
learns to stop
speaking,
as a prisoner in
a foreign
land sits silently
within a cell
between walls
built of ears
and eyes
who see and
hear all
and use
all against him?
How long before
the soul is
reduced to giving
only a knowing nod
and a saddened smile?

The illusion of
option,
of freedom,
of choice—
the patronizing
call of the
jailer—
his insidious
hiss through
the cold steel
bars,
“Your time
is your own,
you may do
as you wish.”

To jump and never land—
to breathe in but never out—
to fall asleep and never wake up...
The glass stillness of a pond,
its surface never disturbed—
peace without its pole:
Nothing.

It’s not that
they don’t speak—
it’s that we
won’t listen.
We hear only
with our ears
now—tuned
for only our
own tones.
Their language
is subtle
and comprehensive;
a language of
truths without
motive, born
of a life
we’ve turned
away from.

I was watching Worlds
moving past and through my own.
They returned my intrigue with wariness,
if anything at all.

Why do they view me
with only misgiving
and indifference?

The glass's glare answered the question
before it could be posed,
signaling back to me
the separation it represents.

It was I who had declared myself as Other—
watching, as a spectator,
the Worlds of the Living.

It struck me that
taking life and giving
life represent two perspectives
of a single act.

Pressures,
forces,
twisting levers—
gears ratcheting down
little by
relentless
little
against a box with
no walls
and no way out.