Thoughts buzzing
like mad gnats...
My head: a battlefield
A swordfight of words
from people living
and dead.

The carnage
is contained and hidden
in this pretentious smile
a demeanor perfected
by repetition...
practice

Yet, inside
Peace gasps for air
for another moment of life
dying from a thousand wounds
from self-doubt

Reality is an empty blank (?)
Expanding, quivering
With its unimaginable scale
in light-years!
Gradually quickening its cosmic throbbing
Peppered with everything that dies
Galaxies
Stars
Planets
People

Obeying a thermodynamic process --
That tyrant among physical laws!
From which nothing is exempt
Even you and I.

Thus, human vanity:
A cosmic joke that fades to nothingness
All aspirations, ambitions
******* by entropy
Quashed to oblivion
All is dust.

And yet, humans toil to fulfill
a delusion
Their hope lies in their work
Their progress, their successes
Salvation!

Still, the universe expands...
Uncaring, disinterested
cold

Not minding the plight
of the human microbe.

I force a smile to
Regain a sense of normality
Curled lips that
Mask the rawness
Of this aching
Emptiness.

No longer am I enamored
With lovely, naive fantasies:
This blank stare into the abyss
Born out of revolt
Against the lie
That happiness is everyone's
Lot in life.

Fortune is a whimsical god
And living is an unpredictable
Farce between birth and death
Such randomness,  brutality
Victimizes those born
Of sound body
But with a fragile mind
And a crumbling sanity.

Reflections of gloom
Are all that keeps me company
This unbearable pessimism
In this tiny room
Yet I cannot stop my inquiries:
My explorations of truth
No matter how wretched it might be
At its very root.

My words are born
Of self-absorption
This eagerness for
Transmogrification of
A self that constantly fails
At this project of conception...

To understand the world --
This grand undertaking
Nothing but motions of futility
Yet I can't comply
I cannot submit
For I am the personification
Of incredulity.

Sleep has fled me
As I sink in this monotonous
Flow of thoughts
The quiet night, a witness
To this perpetual
Sadness...

What is it that I must do?
What is it that I must be?
Confusion morphs
To this mysterious
Exhaustion

And my soul finds no rest

in silence...

The sensation of one's vitality
is the doorway to a deeper understanding
of exquisite inner joys
and the tranquility of being.