So the old world is gone, let a new one replace it!
The world is already dead; that figment
of existence that you knew in the past,
the places well-remembered, those fond scenes
where the history of an ancient folk
(all the hungry babies and curious
children, rebellious teens and then
struggling examples of the working class,
disillusioned prophets and vain playboys,
cross-makers, judges and even martyrs
to the illusions of eternity
constructed and destroyed in an eye’s blink –
in short, those former faded selves of yours
that hide, like skeletons in your closet)
built its quartz sand tableau on the seashore,
where the omnipresent ocean of time
could roughly lick at its crumbling edges
like a ravenous kitten at its cream.
Let the future begin, all you must do is face it!
What is there to remember of the world
that does not, in an instant’s too brief span
fizzle into so much escaping gas
and mingle with the eternal present
(and if held back too long, builds up pressure
in the decanting glass of your reason,
becoming a most volatile mixture
susceptible, if only shaken by mistake,
to expand with a great destructive force
and end both the experiment and the
brief tenure of the experimenter)?
For each moment is past in the second you waste it.
The world is already dead; it has changed
its morphology and become a new
thing, its outline no longer familiar
to those legion of erudite scholars
who seek in vain to catalog its form
and function, to quantify its effects
by narrowing down to a single thing
its primary cause (and to then posit,
through some process of elimination,
a purpose for existence that can be
pounded into pabulum for the masses,
without a consensus of the entire
organism on the truth of that goal).
And yesterday’s wine is dissolved, once you taste it
What is it about our sad illusions,
of our past, that we do not carry as
part of the present self? We do not need
to imprison the world in our own cage,
forcing it to pace the same length and width,
keeping both it and ourselves from moving
beyond these walls, beyond the small, frail life
we imagine is defined so clearly
(but in truth is so much more than we can
fathom, so much more than any can know).
The world must evolve, and with it, we too,
traveling forward at the speed of now,
blind and feeble feeling for the path that
lies ahead, a few small steps further on,
past the pale edge of our frantic searchlights.
Let the old world evolve, let the new world erase it
The world you think you know is dead, like a
religion is a spiritual way that
no longer catches a fire in the heart,
but burns brightly only on the kindling
of evolution.
For the past is the wind, all you can do is chase it.
03 MAR 2003