Ego

When you look into a mirror

You do not see yourself

You see the construct you have built

The idea

The impression

You see the producer of the show that takes place around you

Weary eyed and tired

Both bored yet inspired.

You look into your mirror and see your reality.

But put yourself behind the eyes of another, and look again.

Their reflection of you is different.

The lines are smoother and the edges blurred.

The weight and the shadows lifted.

They see the action behind the cause,

The image through the projector.

Which reality is more real then?

Your personal idea of yourself? Or theirs?

Is it the image you have crafted and presented to the world which holds more true?

Or the agonizing lines and scratches just below the paint?

Is your idea of you a more honest perspective

Or is it convoluted with the voice of yourself?

Is the clearer view the most impossible one

One seen by everyone except yourself?

Ego is a perilous edge.

But if you stand squarely upon it and look

From the mirror to the outside perspective

You’ll find the truth of you lies between them.

It all speaks a different tongue

Sit still.

Close your eyes.

Breathe deeply.

When you open your eyes again

Can you more easily hear?

Beyond the background static

Under the hum of electric lines

There is a pulse.

A drum that all things dance to.

You can feel it in the dirt.

In the tiny lives the erupt with controlled chaos into being.

You can taste it on the wind.

As it touches the edges of all things.

You can see it in the eyes of every sight gifted thing.

This endless pulse of life.

All of existence speaks;

In different tongues,

And different means.

The bending of a leaf will tell you as much if you let it;

As a wag of a tail, a smile that warms the eyes, or a simple touch.

We all speak in different languages.

But the drum still beats the same.

Epitaph

Everyone tells me to

buy this thing

Wear that dress

Use this color

Shave this

Pluck that

Cut along the dotted line.

But I am a rusty truck.

Not some paper doll.

It doesn’t matter how

You buff the rust out

You smoothe the edges

You change this or tweek that

I will always rumble when I start.

The people who love me will never do so because I am perfect.

When I die my epitaph will not read

She was beauty embodied.

No.

It will read:

She was always there.

Scraps 5

I talk with the moon some nights

Hoping she will send

Each word your way

Every thought I cannot say.

I speak with the moon some days

When she is so faint

For having found the sun

But content for seeing him.