We have walked with our eyes closed.
We have wreaked havoc as we go.
We have fought  the bad fight.
We have knelt to superstition.

We have thrilled to the human touch.
We have given our lives for our babies
We have found what we call love.
We have considered our posterity.

We have continually reconstructed our definition.
We have repeatedly lost and found our way.
We have never mastered the skill of co-existence.
We have never discovered the reason for our being.

But for all that we are and will ever be, there is one everlasting constant:
Our cells cry out in a shameless and painful attempt to nullify our mortality .
Arts and letters, music and poetry – all yearnings for the grace of eternity.
Cruel irony that we sentient beings are never to receive the blessed key.

Remember the scruffy but lovable traveler with his worn bindle so characterized?
The hobo was a gig guy way back when, hopping on trains to make ends meet.

The romance, the adventure, all on your own, responsible to no one in particular. Now an ingrained myth among our other self myths. The loner, the go-getter. The self-made man, the bootstrap hiker-upper.

We love our John Wayne stories of glory, now etched in granite and hanging over us like a scolding aunt’s repeated finger-wagging.

It’s hell trying to live up to the slogans, bumper sticker thoughts, and flag-waving aficionados.

Are they really so different?

People of such presumed benighted nature that we have permission from on high to consider them as one lump, stereotyped to death.

Them

Not individuals, maybe even subhuman: We can slur them, avoid them, exploit them, deny them, punish them, reduce them to nothing.

Them

Cooked on high, a mercurial rise in status, an influencer for the times. If I can make it here, I can make it …well, you know.

I want likes, loves, thumbs up, and a kick in the ***. Love me from afar. My grandiose boobprints in cement for posterity.

Fame becomes me, teaches me to reach for the stars and settle for my own show. I’d sell my soul, if I had one, to be idolized.

Fast forward to a new order.  New stars in a new medium. Go figure. Obsolescence so soon? My hand was this close to the brass ring.

Moving too many steps at once finds me back where I started. So let’s take it easy. We have an eternity, don’t we?
I look for leads everywhere, a hint as to finding out where I am and where I want to go. Betting on who I might be.

Starting from the sea, my scaly body emerges. Walking upright I enter the city of lights. I broker laws and sense myself.
Flip of the dice lands me here on this page, beseeching your help. My steps should have meaning, a righteous path.

But how to comport myself in this horror show of a world, bodies strewn on tainted land, men returning to the beast mode.
Angry spittle and no reason reasoning. Shifting winds portending doom.  Evil clowns masquerading as human beings.

Resistance at all costs. One step at a time.

In my dreams I can sing like a bird. Waking up, I just croak trying. It saddens me that I can sing an aria only in my dreams.
I always start on a high note. Why can’t I sustain it? Maybe it is the pollution, the congestion of the air that fails me.

In slumber I am an artist of black and white prints that reveal one mystery after another unfolding before my eyes.
The next day I feel energized to create a masterpiece. Alas, my fingers recoil at the sight of my paltry attempts.

But awake I dance with a light foot and a dizzy head as I circle and swirl to my image’s delight, my heart as my witness.