(Originally written in 2018)
Youthful ignorance, guiltless
as primordial darkness,
obscured the path before me.
Called forth from the fertile earth,
the forest floor of my birth,
unaware of my semblance
to the branches, roots, and leaves
I swore never to believe
– yet still found would define me.
Awakened by the cold light
of a star, radiant white,
not a second was squandered:
if this was not destiny:
divine path set before me,
I would wander forever.
I knelt before a fragile flower
and said, “I fear you might wither tomorrow,
and I can only stay for an hour.
But I cannot pluck you from this meadow,
nor preserve your countenance in a picture.
For can you truly exist
outside of all of this?
What does all this become in your absence?
How does one capture the moment in its entirety,
and preserve it for eternity?
A picture might flatter your brilliant hues,
but can it contain the warmth of the sun,
or the capricious April breeze?
Can it convey their strange equilibrium,
perfected in this moment I cannot seize?”
She replied,
“Caress my petals,
breathe in my fragrance.
In an hour we die.”
“Are we both so fragile, you and I,
that in an hour’s time we are doomed to die?
Have I not the strength to spare us both,
and capture this joy I feel right now?
I am so busy, I do not have much time!
You see, I had to schedule this visit,
and would derive all that I can from it.”
“Yet you are not so full of joy, but fear.
And your fear of losing the moment
has stolen the moment from you!
Oh, you feel the joy of the present,
espy that creature, so rare, so magnificent,
then strive to preserve it for the future.
You kill the beast and mount it
so that you can gaze on it forever.”
“Oh how quickly the sand falls through the glass.” I cried.
“Hurry then, I beg you, tell me how the beast survives?
“In an hour you will die here with me,
and the man you do not know will leave.
Will he despair of the moment he could not grasp,
clutching instead some lifeless facsimile?
Or will he hold that blessed memory,
immaterial and immortal?
Will each breath have been taken
as though it were the last?
The moment, the thing itself, sufficient,
even as it dissolves in to the past?
The picture, the painting, the preserved bouquet,
each is lifeless in its own way.
The shutter, the brush, the delicate touch,
oh those tired hands, driven before a desperate mind!
It misses the very joy
it is striving to bind,
and counting down the clock,
dies unhappily with the moment.”
I was certain it was all or nothing.
Could ignorance gamble a different solution?
But in the end, it was all for nothing.
Desperately through ashes I was sifting.
Had I recourse but to hold fast the illusion
of one solution – of all or nothing?
Beneath the foundation I was digging.
Perhaps not all was lost and the real delusion
was scribed on the wall as: all for nothing.
Only ashes and dust am I reaping
– gripping, ripping from the earth in my vexation
as each angel that swore “All or nothing.”
Now not even remorse counts for something
– yes, it might outweigh every other emotion,
but it can’t pay this debt of all for nothing.
What is left but hope- oh that cruelest thing,
for “ex nihilo” is ever the conclusion.
Are you certain it is all or nothing?
Can you pay the price of all for nothing?
Leaning up against the door frame,
I watched you finish your makeup.
Pausing for a moment with your mascara,
you caught my eye in the mirror…
and smiled.
How domestic, how nostalgic
this moment was.
Yes, that smile was so familiar
but it was only the specter
of one I held so much dearer,
and left, many years ago.
Pareidolia? Perhaps.
And I suspect you would laugh
at this pathetic confession
from a sentimental man
that just left you breathless and satisfied.
For what was sentimentality
to an emotional artist?
An artist so disconnected from her creations:
dissonant machinations
of commodified emotions.
You could paint a smile for any occasion.
You would be nostalgic for each lover.
Ah! And you never missed a chance to check your reflection.
– how I watched you practice in the glass.
So mesmerizing, so detached.
God, now I wonder,
for a girl that spent so much time
in front of the mirror,
did you find yourself so familiar?
My days are spent fixing broken machines.
Sometimes the owners misuse them,
sometimes a part simply wore out.
Poor engineering is possible too.
The problem isn’t always obvious
and some machines are quite complicated.
But if I know its designated purpose,
then give me enough time to observe it
attempting to fulfill this function
and I might have a diagnosis.
Give me time to peruse the manual.
Are there idiosyncracies
and proprietary parts?
Are they generic and universal,
is it analog or smart?
Give me enough time to open panels,
watch the brake in operation,
trace a wire, or listen to the gear box.
Just give me enough time.
Just give me enough time.
Just give me enough time,
this one is particularly difficult.
See, I still don’t understand its purpose
and I cannot find a manual.
Certainly I am intimately acquainted
with its idiosyncratic patterns
as it attempts to fulfill some function,
but all too often, falls short.
What that function is,
I do not know,
for it has never completed anything,
– no products to show –
and I have begun to suspect poor engineering.
Still! Is it not JUST a machine like all the others?
Given enough time
and careful observation,
surely I can determine
the cause of this malfunction.
Surely I can fix it
and see what it was meant to do.
But God, I’ve been troubleshooting
this machine
for almost fifteen years now…
I saw the world through shards of glass.
Insufficient reflections
were fragmented introspections.
I could not see the totality of my delusion.
I saw the world through shards of glass.
An unbidden visitor,
a revenant of reason,
warned of an imminent destruction:
the collapse, the implosion of illusion.
“Run!” he said ,”Keep your eyes straight ahead!
There is nothing for you here anymore!”
But I faltered as I fled.
I stopped and I turned back
for a reminiscent gaze
upon a conflagrated past.
I did not know this sight would be my last.
My hand outstretched to grasp
one more second of borrowed time…
… stopped.
Flesh and bone became crystalline,
tear drops cracked into powder.
I saw the end in shards of glass.
We were dying in the present moment.
I was running from my memories,
you were trying to chase your dreams.
We thought we were the solution,
but didn’t know we were so broken,
we were running in circles,
colliding at the antipodes.
I gave up on the future
when it became a rear view mirror.
These problems were cyclical,
we were so predictable,
but too addicted to each other
to see what went wrong.
We sped towards our self destruction:
a collision course bound for
each other.
Indifferent to the collateral,
we were dying in the present moment.
He said, “Deny yourself and follow me.”
but we fell so short in that instruction,
one might conclude we did the opposite.
The renunciation of pleasure
became
the pleasure of renunciation.
Self-denial became the virtue
and ceased being the means to attain them.
Cradling this deformed
and stunted soteriology,
our gaze only ever turned outwards
to accuse one another
of the sins we had invented.
Still, He was calling, “Follow me!”
Yes, there He stood: the least of these,
on San Pablo and Divisadero.
Did we see his divinity- his humanity?
No, we could not even see his privation,
it lay just outside our myopic casuistry.
We could only see the sin:
the indulgence and the addiction.
“Depart in peace.” We said to him.
“Be filled with the evidence of things unseen.”
Then we took up yet another offering
for those impoverished, yet believers,
in faraway countries.
Eternity was eclipsed by doubt
and reason shone bright
in the darkened sky.
I saw for the first time
his dogmatic bones jut
from beneath a withering numinosity.
It was in that precipitous moment
of irreversible disillusionment
that I killed God.
A sourceless and awful cry
split the doctrinal foundation,
shook the cyclopean temple
of my adolescent subconsciousness.
I fell to my knees,
covered my ears
and closed my eyes.
When I dared to look again,
where his body had just been,
dropped an immeasurable chasm.
His corpse now suspended above it,
all flesh and bone disintegrated
like papyrus and parchment,
until only his heart hung in the air.
As if beckoning me, it hesitated,
then burst into flame,
and fell into the abyss below.
Away from the edge,
back into the temple I fled,
unaware of my atavism.
There, in reason’s cold and waning light,
shining through the shifted stones,
it was not the Devil that took God’s place.
What I heard ever after
was not the Devil’s laughter,
but ineffable silence.
How auspicious this apparent florescence
must have seemed at first:
an irresistible panoply of all you were ativistically designed to seek.
But it was an unintentional deception
– the stars reflected in the water.
In your desperate search through each and every hue,
your strength was bartered for regret.
Exhaustion weighed down your wings
as you crawled, still driven by duty,
toward this insufficient facsimile.
Now the sun sets.
Now the sun sets upon your fatal mistake,
filters through the opaque glass
and casts upon your lifeless body
a death shroud of many colors.
Poetry by Adam Nevarez 