Beacon

We Are All Dodging Bullets Of Some Kind, Aren’t We?

(Homework I, II & III)

Homework I
Part 1 – Erroneous Expectations

They come from anywhere
They come at any time
Those things you still seem to think will go away
As if all those stories you read as a child were real
And the pain you feel will evaporate
But that’s just not how it works
Irrational fantasies devastate
The ability to accept reality
Making a pin-prick feel like a shotgun blast to the chest

Part 2 – Lost Directions

Your desire is wealth but what you really seek is acceptance
A chance to not feel useless
For every breath you draw in
To not leave you empty and wondering
Lost and wandering
But you’re afraid of what the mirror shows you
The ‘fullness’ of your life the perfect complement to the abyss inside you
Go ahead; look into your own eyes
Look past the little scar that never went away
And drives you crazy every time you see it
Focus on yourself the way you focus on trinkets
Go deeper than you have ever gone before
And you’ll see.. there’s simply nothing there

Homework II
Well, yea, maybe…

Every time I go to get something from the pile of clean clothes waiting for me to fold,
There’s a bed sheet or two in there and I think, “How could we use this many sheets?”
“We don’t use this many sheets. It’s impossible!”
“There is NO FUCKING WAY we use this many sheets!”
Then I think about it and well, yea, maybe we do use that many sheets

Homework III
Thank Them

Thank them
Thank the ghosts of those that have sought the truth
Get down on your knees
And bow to them
Because seeking the truth may just be the only honorable objective on Earth
The truth, you see
Is hard to grasp sometimes
Like the fish you tried to grab at the beach that day when you were four
But just, couldn’t
Its fucking calculus and geometry and algebra
Numbers and letters and shapes Everywhere
And only those that know how to look at it can see it
The truth, camouflages well
It can be glimpsed in half-sentences and words missing from newscasts,
Like greed and Power and LIARS
Glimpsed in the eyes of the woman whose first love died in a jungle and whose only son died in a desert,
Both to make rich men,
Richer
Thank them
Because the truth,
Is the cold, hard brutality of everyday’s reality
Mocking your attempts at ignorance
Like the way you ignore that your second husband’s eyes
Make you oddly thankful the even though she’s your little baby,
your daughter’s leaving for college soon
It cares not if you can handle or accept it
It does not concern itself with your fragility
It is the thing that wakes us at night
Pulled out of the inner-hell we pretend doesn’t exist yet allow to dominate us
The internal screams of our darkest nightmares
that make our eyes pop open at 2:47 in the morning
With the absolute terror
Of revelation