The Art of Not Being

[L'absent]

To avoid feeling the void,
human beings invent achievements,
chasing after calendars and celebrations,
as if time weren't already devouring them.
They cling to hands sweaty with meaning,
exchanging promises
that the wind scatters before they can ever be kept.

To not succumb to their own insignificance,
they build walls of words,
create sophisticated anxieties,
convince themselves that their pain is unique,
that their existence is a dense tapestry of events
and not just a meaningless parenthesis in the chaos.

To not recognize their own fragility,
they construct papier-mâché identities,
masks with which to face the world,
pretending to be more than flesh awaiting decomposition.
They persuade themselves that they have a role,
a purpose, a meaning,
when they are merely distracted spectators of a play
without beginning or end.

To avoid seeing their own shadow,
they cling to dogmas, causes, passions,
playing the hero, the devotee, the revolutionary,
as if history were a river that remembers
and not a vortex that swallows everything without a trace.

To not admit that their love
is merely a reflection of need,
they invent eternal bonds,
turn solitude into loyalty,
the fear of abandonment into devotion,
and call it all emotion.

To avoid seeing themselves for what they are,
they gaze into the eyes of others,
seeking validation, applause, adoration,
as if a reflection could give substance
to what has never had any.

And so, between rituals, worries, and convictions,
human beings spend their lives
evading the simplest of truths:
they are nothing,
but they do everything to never realize it.

 

[Pluto]

 

[quietism]

Beautiful poem.

 

[Forever Sleep]

Wow. Did you write that?

So many lines made me smile in self recognition:

'Convince themselves that their pain is unique'

Guilty but then, I suppose it is. No one else is 'you' experiencing your exact circumstances.

'As if history were a river that remembers'

I suppose we all want our lives and especially pain to have meant something. That scene in the 2009 film: 'Moon' made me really upset. Spoiler alert: When he finds out he is a clone. Somehow, all the emotions he felt so strongly over things he believed to be real were all synthetic. Somehow, that seemed really upsetting. But then, what real good are our own genuine emotions to real events? They're just one of many billions of bad things to happen and bad emotions as a result. All of which will be lost to time. I guess that's why people like the idea of heaven where you get rewarded for all the shit you put up with!

'To not admit their love is merely a reflection of need'

I wonder if all love is about getting needs fulfilled. Including the need to fulfill the needs of others. To feel needed ourselves.

Amazing, thought provoking poem.