She watches
from the shadows of my dreams
and cries.
Lost in a fog of regret.
Never to fly.
The goal of any life is getting to the end before anyone realizes you don’t really know what you’re doing!
I have a secret.
Do I tell?
Yes!
Let’s spread it to the world.
I love you!
I know not what I do.
But for some reason, I’m allowed to keep doing it.
A charlatan.
A fraud.
Just like you,
and everyone around us.
What knowledge do you boast?
Pretense of authorship.
Plagiaristic fool!
Conspiracists would have us believe in secret knowledge.
Scientists. . . the scientific method.
We bathe in a cosmic consciousness
and pretend to discover truth which has always been.
I close my eyes and listen to the space between.
Much larger than the measured volume.
A universe within a box.
Contained, yet unbound.
Eyes can be deceptive.
Pluck them out and break the bonds.
I have lived near 60 years.
But I am timeless.
Older than the Sun.
Younger than my mother.
She is older than the cosmos.
But younger than an olive grove.
I think I’ll make a martini.
My mind is blank.
I’m in a prison.
No family.
No friends.
No relationship.
No purpose.
Past interests fade.
And lackluster memories reflect an endless series of meaningless events
that waste time and produce the illusion of importance.
When you die you can say, “Look at all I’ve done.”
But over time those events will be forgotten,
and future generations will care less.
Believing they can somehow reach immortality through cleverness and action alone.
If you manage to die with one friend by your bed,
holding your hand as you gasp your last breath,
you will have succeeded more than if you climbed Mount Everest.
Who will be by my bed when I die?
And will all that I care about fade away with me?
My few belongings given to Goodwill,
or thrown in a community dumpster.
I realize now how foolish I have been,
attempting to carve out my place in society.
As if fancy clothes and dinner parties have any purpose other than to illicit transient pleasure
that can never be a substitute for true fulfillment.
The birth of my children remain the sole pleasures of life that I consider extraordinary.
Nothing in life compares.
Were my parents as happy the day I was born?
That moment when a life is brought into the world.
A feeling of hope.
Hope that this new life will somehow figure out the riddle and transcend beyond the ordinary.
But that moment of excitement fades.
Only to be replaced by struggle.
A life of struggle.
I’m tired.
And all the meditation, centering, positive thinking, or prayers to God won’t fix it.
I just want to be left alone.
When I die, my version of heaven is a small cottage in the woods with plenty of firewood,
and an endless supply of all the books I can read.
Don’t look for me.
And don’t try to visit.
There will be no one around to yell at me, criticize, or make fun of me.
While God has an endless sandbox universe, I only need my solitude.
And I will treat my friends as they have treated me, and walk away.
My thoughts echo in my head.
A chamber.
More like a chamber of carnival mirrors.
Reflecting a distortion of nothing.
Emptiness.
I look around.
The entrance, a vanishing point in time.
The exit, unknown.
Unavailable.
Are there others here with me, staring into the same void?
I stand naked in a crowded room and wonder why the rest of the world is wearing clothes.
They say clothes make the man.
I say, men make the clothes,
and man is still naked.
There was a strong wind last night
I always feel secure when a strong wind threatens to blow down my house
Howling from the depths
The feeling of sitting inside a cocoon
Akin to being back in the womb
I listen for a secret message
The shutters bang
I convert it into Morse code but translation evades me
There must be a meaning
Mathematicians always look for order out of chaos
Proof of intelligence
Because chaos is cruel
And meaningless
My life must have meaning
Surely, I am different from the rest
Or am I?
Just like the four seasons
Civilizations come and go
Empires rise and fall
I can no more control my fate as I can a coming storm
So, I listen to the wind
And know that we coexist
Order, not out of chaos
but from within
The wind may howl
The shutters bang
But I am secure
I see red and blue, but not purple
Green, but not tan or brown
I see you, but you don’t see me
It’s all about point of view and interpretation
The stars are out tonight
Do they look down on us and judge our incompetence?
I look up and see perfection
Is up preferred to down or vice versa?
Gravity should be considered an inferior force
Cold seeps in. Deep – penetrating. It threatens to misalign my persona. I’m worried it will end up in a disagreeable state. Not that I haven’t already been accused of being disagreeable from time to time. But to end up as a malformed Popsicle after having been half melted, pressurized and then flash-frozen into a grotesque facsimile of my former self seriously disturbs me.
I was once open-minded and optimistic. The world was mine for the taking. But then life got in the way of my plans. How I ended up in this frozen wasteland is a story I only partially remember.
There was a knock on the door. I should have never opened it. A woman with well-placed morals in need of a spare tire. What was supposed to be a quick fix, attach a jack, loosen a few lug nuts, and inflate a sad, white sidewall, unexpectedly turned out to be a redirected life path decision. As payment for being a good Samaritan. . . By the way, Did I mention that my name is Sam? So as payment, she wanted to take me to dinner. I wasn’t even hungry. So why did I get in the car?
The view from my window had been obscured by the overnight growth of hoarfrost. I paced the room and waited.
To be continued!
I talked to her today
Thought it would be different
But it was more of the same
The discussions I had in my mind confused me
Made me believe that she changed
It was her birthday
After all these years I still remembered
She asked when my birthday was
So typical
She never cared to remember
I talked to her today
Thought it would be different
But it was more of the same
The discussions I had in my mind confused me
Made me believe that she changed
I used to believe that people could change
That they would strive to become more
Better
But it was more of the same
I wanted to believe that I changed
Became more
Better
I talked to her today
Thought it would be different
But it was more of the same
Samuel DiPaola 