The Human Speck

We are the human speck
cast out
to exist in a different reality;
to flower or to shrivel
as we choose
the die is cast
but no instruction given;
make what we will
perish or thrive,
if it matters at all
it is unknowable;

Here
a nebulous thing rolls
quakes, stumbles then stays
a moment settled -
a bubble in sea or sky,
or in morphing land form.
"Only a bubble, a speck am I?
Thrust mid the webbed forest
and tearing wind?"

this thing, this self, this me
amid clouded senses
battles to keep
a moment's ray
bumming in through some
accidental pinhole -
it's greens and blues
it's coded message
in a jungle
where laws emerge
only after the crime

Here
mid existence:
"Believe or die -
and die in the carousel
of belief!"
...and death is insistent
as it crawls into a shadow asking:
"What am I?"
(a shadow of the self of course,
but what is the self?)

"Belief, the fragile truth
am I, I believe"
Reason then weighs mighty
and is quick to object:
Belief is matter
you believe to exist,
do you call this truth?

Here
this speck lacks definition,
disintegration seems near;
polar forces tug every way.
What thread of conscience
could hold it together?
Whereas peace be oblivion
life insists its slow crawl
through the very pulse of its vein;
it begs the very speck of a leaf,
rides the wrinkle of skin
belts anger, the ugly,
the soft...

Here
All is sea...
a mass of sound
a graffiti wall of lies in
truisms without array,
without direction

...and here
the experiment
moves in tide’s time
at the mercy
of its own criteria

And here am I
mid the gutter and the grime
where things don't matter
and words don't try to rhyme;
but the death song rings
as the madman sings of the power
of words and faithful dreams;

here, in the carnival of decay
in the wind ridden rain,
or in the endless subway;
through corridor and hallway of
tenements dressed in rags, where adventures
of the night lead to unknown places,
and foreign faces melt
like patterns in a river,
winding narrow then broad;
(pain and joy, death in life)
joining and splitting;
always moving, never the same,
like a smile that fades,
a song that ends
the memory that plays
rides the wave over and under
and over again

Here
in this cabaret of senses
I lift an eye-lid
letting in
a slice of light:
It is sometime in my existence.