My biggest fear is that I won’t be relevant any longer
I fade, like an afterimage once the flash has worn away
Remaining there, standing against the wall, forlorn
Posters are hung behind me, images to invoke thought
Thoughtful response, moments in time, reverberations
I am scared, that is the feeling that I wrestle
Pinning it is useless, as touch makes it spread
As a slime mold seeking its food in a dish of agar
It is so heavy, the fear, resting on my chest
Pinning my breath, compressing my ability to pronounce
Enunciate, and give life to my thoughts, that are aging
Perhaps I was never relevant
I thought learning that I know nothing was a milestone
But it was only the first gate that allowed entry
The alarms blared, the siren screaming profoundly
As if to announce that such things are a rite of passage
How did I know then that it was not such a thing
To realize, to grasp, to touch the face of the truth
That few reach the gate intact, or pass through
Unscathed, without mar or burn, because I am privileged
I did not know hunger, or loss, or the lack to move
Beyond my means or resources, did I ever struggle
So now that struggle knocks, and I heave my chest
And find that it is insurmountable
It is a question that hangs behind me, against the wall
Touching my shoulder gently, reverently informing
This is fear, my friend, this is edge of darkness
Depression is two doors that way, and happiness
An illusion, masterfully crafted encouragement
Propagations of a lie, a promise made of opportunities
They did not exist, no more for my role models
Than for myself, and yet, it lived, crawling forward
Zombie-like, shuffling with groans and grunts
Tapping on windows of chance and luck, smearing
A face that is my own, for I have seen it before
But now, it is graying, fallible
Am I on a precipice without awareness it lies below
Do I walk on the edge of a ledge unknowingly
Is there an actual truth to be rooted out, seen
Touched and admired, brushed free of the detritus
The remnants of forgetfulness, of something sinister
Such things plague the world, death and fear, hate
Hope is failing now, in the twilight of the empire
For the emperor has no clothes, insists they are fine
Everything is fine, fine, everything is fine
Lies are not fine, injustice is not fine
Does anyone care that the squalor is accepted now
We wallow, and that is the dream
Relevance is a funny thing from a throne
I see not what is outside my throne room
For my castle’s walls are held up by belief
Self soothing rationalization with stones of lies
That zombie of self reflection is meant to be there
It is a servant, it cannot be discarded,
That fear it will always shamble towards the shadow
To sit on the chest, and squeeze sorrow from your eyes
Lemons and limes, sour fruit that hangs strangely there
But as long as we are able to lie enough
Psychotic will to persevere, to challenge all
Is fraught with self loathing that truth lies
Such things are dangerous toys, arsenals of ideas
An RPG that carries intractable, unresolvable thought
A grenade of blame and c4 plasticity of truth
These things will blow up in our collective faces
Truth is not subjective or personal, truth it universal
A life cannot matter if at any stage it does not matter
Ultimate belief is a prison to be coddled by
Held within, not to question yourself in the echo chamber
Because being hyperaware of those that suffer more
Only shines a light of discomfort upon ourselves
So we lie, we shutter the windows, against our family
Our society, our neighborhoods, and call it freedom
Every generation that has come to the problem
Has pushed it forward by a single horst cart, only
To have it roll backwards across their ankles
Snapping and tearing, and revealing nothing changed
The people are harvested, a resource to be leveraged
And cruelty, mindless and wanton, seeps from our leaders
Infects our people, makes them sick and tired of everything
Did not the tablet decry to give us your sick, your tired,
Your huddled masses? Here they are, huddling from violence
To wear a rifle is to be a patriot, but to wear a mask a victim
The victim is the ideal of who we should be, aspiring
Not woke, but self aware, seeking the ultimate truth
Self reflection that I am a lie, built over decades
Scares me to my core, it hollows me out to show rot
These dark things are not age spots, it is failure
Relevance to the greater ideal, of what we should be
Of who we should be, of what we should strive to be
Am I capable of the ideal? Will I ever fall long instead
Of short, of poorly measured, not found wanting,
To be the best version of ourselves, screaming not in anger
But in robust, raw, turbulent joy of each other
When was the last time we sought to embrace the fearstrikers
The odd, the misfit, the opposite, the others of ourselves
Am I capable to reach across to others that I fear
Death comes for all of us, some hidden beneath our sheets
Some standing before something they are afraid of
Some beaten down for believing in the ideal before them
Some cowering, unconscious, more spaghetti than man
Spread across a room of beeping machines and stale air
We are not meant to do it alone, our spirits are wired
To connect to others, to greaters, to the sky, the stone, the sea
The crash of the ocean, the bird calls, the sound of wind
The trees breathing around us, calling to our spirits
Threads, woven and intersecting, gold and silver
To the heavens, where the gaps in our spirits are filled
Because we should be relevant to each other
I am relevant to you, as you to another, to me
Is this a secret to be shared, some vast truth unspoken
This is the truth, for untouched it remains untarnished
And the lies are what we stack upon it, futilely
Because it is fucking easier, isn’t that righteous
We cross our hearts, and say our prayers, and fucking lie
To who? To ourselves? Yes. To our children? Yes.
And for what? Some short term pleasure that removes the pain
To know that we are in this together, but individuals
Believe that we are better off, trekking the waist deep snow alone
The right thing is obvious, and it is not the individual
The lie is to ourselves without measure
We lie fallow alone