We live each day, gliding with or without purpose on unsure wings of limited experience, wafting above difficulties, soaring around barriers, merely missing dead ends, only to alter direction and continue moving.

Our sophisticated brains and primitive spirituality have changed us into angels and we exist somehow as civilized carnivores, forced to perpetually keep in motion in order to survive.

But if the flow of activity, that kinetic self constantly seeking purpose, is the one observed by those outside, then somewhere under the bed lies the sloughed shedding of a subliminal soul.

Predatory memories that once tore at our psyches and gnawed on our egos, have now been tamed and confined to some distant cage, a cage that traps the past and domesticates the feral future.

We sleep somewhere above this confined remembrance, dreaming of our deity as the beast inside is rendered harmless, its aged bones lovely in their slow exposure:

          A dented trumpet, tarnished in the twenty years left untouched

           Comfortable sneakers, naked without laces, banned from the sight of unexpected company

          The long-lost receipt for chicken pot pie, 2% milk, and cough drops – a receipt that once marked the borderline  between the read and unread territories of a forbidden book now so banal the library has discarded its carcass

Who are we anyway?

We pretend to be what we were, lust for what we are not, and agonize over what we actually are.

Does the truth of our existence ever coincide with reality, whether our own or someone else’s?

Will we ever rise to the splendor of the angels we long to emulate, the ones we know exist but refuse to mention?

Some will, some won’t, and some will just spend a lifetime shoving clutter under the bed.

Copyright 2009