happiness habitually tends toward apathy
permitting brainlessness to fester in the
throes of misanthropy while indefatigable
entropy saps the mind and heart
robbing the joyful of their shared humanity

emotion's heady debris linger in hapless
inanity while infatuation produces a stupor
unmatched by the strongest of spirits
reducing the compassionate to one-sided
and ambivalent caricatures of divinity

have we been deceived
force-fed untruth from birth
on celluloid silver screens
did we barter literature for
delusions of grandeur
in frivolous narratives manufactured
to distract from reality or detract
from the movement to abolish hateful
programs perpetuating poverty

or has cynicism left me jaded hating
that which is most precious in the human
experience because past horrors and
present woes cannot permit the possibility
of future redemption to overcome these
walls i've built around my dismembered soul

as is often the case i see the answer's far
from crystal clear it's amorphous and contorted
caught somewhere between two distant antitheses
which create a spectrum of relative ambiguity
amidst a reality neither certain nor secure

nevertheless i'll try to unearth the truth
whatever it may be and wherever it lies buried
harboring the knowledge in the back of my skull
that there may not even be such a thing
i'll salvage courage from
the wreckage of wistfulness
a wanderer waylaid in the chasm of gray matters