What You Think It Is

It isn’t what you think it is at all.
There is no solid substance underneath.
Just one small push will make the whole thing fall,
and patching it together, to be brief,
is just a pointless exercise, designed
to take you far beyond your breaking point,
and there, when you begin to lose your mind,
to leave you helplessly and fully out of joint.

It’s an illusion: what you think you see
as disconnected one-offs in the void
are neither separate, stand-alone, or free.
They try to be, but quickly get annoyed
with any effort made to reconcile
their make-believe, imagined state of grace,
with a mere safety net meant to beguile
and leave you with a smile upon your face.

This freedom that you seek, and prize so high:
what do you think it means to stand alone
while life and love’s engagements pass you by
and do not leave their numbers in your phone?
You are not an island tossed out in the sea,
a thousand miles from any human touch.
There is no place where you are not with me.
You cannot disengage the world that much.

It isn’t what you want to think. How real
does your imagination make this seem?
Beneath the shadows, will you find some steel,
or only graying remnants of a dream?
That sense of permanence is just a lie
you tell yourself makes substance out of dust,
and gives you satisfaction, by and by,
until like everything, it turns to rust.

04 SEP 2025

© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.