Who Are We in Atomistic Verses of Time?

An existential poem about discovering the fleeting self

Who are you, my friend? What is your purpose in this life? Have you figured it out or are you as lost as me?

Have you found your meaning yet, or are you still searching inside the casket, to understand why she died. Still rummaging through the trash of nonsensical moments as to why you tore to pieces those family pictures in hopes of erasing what he did that night, as you lay in bed, praying to a collapsing stars.

Have you found those who love you? Those who rolled down hills, howling like wolves to the silver moon, as the cops chased us through the park, cackling like ravens the whole time.

Who do you love, my friend? I hope there are many, but not too many That you have forgotten the meaning of the word Like so many of those, I have met in my wanderings in my time, underneath the bridges of faces faded, in grief.

Who do you trust? I hope it is more than one, for one cannot live with no one to trust, to believe, to love

What are your hopes and dreams? Without hope, one fades into nothing Without dreams, one wanders lonely riding blind the trains, Sad and alone, broken lie horses who lost the wild on those highways, only an addict knows.

Beware of the wrong type of hope, my friend, hope like those pills I used to take, hope like a doctor unwilling to give you the odds of meeting that ineffable doorkeepers, the riddle we all beseech. The type that almost destroyed me The type that promises happiness and glory The one that promises to make all things right, to ease sorrow from moments pending. That hope will destroy you faster than being in love with an addict.

What are your vices? What mistakes have you made? Have you learned from them? did you bend the clocks with your mind, and rewind the days with prose, and beckon Apollo’s horses, with a poem?

What are your greatest achievements? I hope there are many, I hope they unveil their true face in the mirror I hope it lies beyond money, fame, or riches I hope it lies in family, children, lovers, and many diverse experiences.

Have you faced death, the loss that takes and never gives? Have you had to bury a loved one? And in that loss, Did you also bury a piece of yourself? Did you find them in your dreams upon that infinite beach? Or, like me, did you choose to stay and become a ghost to walk, forever, those empty corridors alone?

Have you rid your fear of the end, the dark shadow sitting on that chair, picking the earth from his nails, Do you now pity him like I do? Did you hold him close and whisper in his ear, that someday, he, too, shall smell the land after a thunderstorm, and all the while, hear the seagulls sing.

Have you watched a sunrise? Did you cry upon the grasses of a loved one’s grave? choke on death and rebirth as you hunted, love like it was the last deer on earth?

Have you created without destruction? the duality between the light and the dark, the day and the night, the dream and the reality, the life and the death, for they are all one

Have you sacrificed yourself at least once for the greater good? Have you held your child in your arms and felt the hope of the future to be?

Have you experienced the beauty of letting go of the ego, the self? Have you shown kindness and love to a perfect stranger? Look into their eyes and immerse yourself in their truth.

Do you realize that life is bigger than you and me? That we’re just grains of sand upon an infinite beach Have you come to understand that life is the pieces, shredded, imperfect forms that don’t fit the picture, that it is you, your scarred and trembling hands Does that make the painting? The painting is us all That we have the power to change, That we are not destined by fate That we are free to believe, to love, to create prosperity.

Did you figure out how to fit the world inside your heart or did you accept the absurd and realize you and I make the world? That the world is created by rebellion and loss. That every infinity lies in the finite. Did epiphany come, too, by studying the trees?

Have you lost yourself in bed with a stranger, and found it again while stumbling at twilight, screaming at the ghosts of an insomniac city?

Have you stumbled blindly upon your path torn boots, ragged clothes, crow feet eyes? Have you faced your demons slain them with the wisdom Obtained in the worst of ways the best of days did you drink and fuck through the night, make gods tremble and demons cry? Through loss, did your grow true? I hope you didn’t let it destroy you.

Oh, my friend, Have you seen it? Those faces in the primordial waters, and those echoes that fade in time? the sad-eyed reflection in the pond, faded like the old train covered by grass and leaves, rotting in the tracks, they forget, to remove before they build, a hospice beside it.

Oh, my friend, Have you faced it? Have you dreamt of it? Have you lived? Have you breathed it? Do you know yet, the impermanent You?

© Bradley J Nordell 2024

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