Ego Death
Ego Death
To fall is to plummet steadily
Towards what is unpleasantly
Found in the things we have stored,
The things we have seen,
And the things we wish to have been
If our emotions could afford
Admitting we knew lesser than.
Deckhand to Captain; orphan to orphan,
Could you feel the World opening wide;
See your future on the grooves of his tongue
Watch as the molars clung
To your leg as it was swallowed with your pride.
Life lustre turned obsession,
Obsession turned life lesson.
Like mistletoe loves the sun––
You grow off the backs of those who perish,
Feed off what others cherish.
When all is said and done
You cannot fight your Armageddon
No matter how polished your harpoon gun.
Soon you will hang yourself
On that self-appointed medal.
Oh the hypocrisies between pot and kettle,
Feral, you cannot settle, you are left on the shelf
To fall is to float slowly,
To glide coldly
Into plumes of ashen grain
Watch as tatters of you flutter away,
Dance on the current in some morbid ballet
And applaud as you catalogue your pain.
Events flicker past in a never ending phenakistoscope
Round and round as you grieve and hope
The weight of your heart might be forgiven.
The anger you were once devoted
Now crumbled and eroded
In the water salted and tear stricken.
Better to lay here in an ecosystem made from your corpse
Than left a sun-bleached trophy for human taunts.
Unknowing is welcomed through the mind’s eye
The process both abstract and finite,
Milky eyes strain to find light,
Mother, please, can you sing that heartsong lullaby?
Notes
Notes
Below are some notes about this piece, including the thoughts and external inspirations that occurred during its creation.
Bear in mind, this is simply what I was thinking of when I wrote these poems and what they mean to me. If you interpreted them differently, that does not diminish how you felt as the reader nor the correctness/incorrectness of what you were thinking. Poetry is subjective, and so is being alive.
“The World…your Armageddon” are both referring to the white whale, Moby Dick.
“Pot and kettle” comes from the original idiom of “the pot calling the kettle black” which is used in a situation where somebody comments on or accuses someone else of a fault that the accuser shares.
“Left on the shelf” is another idiom which is used when something or someone is left behind socially, that they are unwanted.
“Phenakistoscope” [fen-ah-kiss-toe-scope] is one of the earliest forms of animation where the frames of a movement are painted in a circle and then spun really fast to make a repeated loop.
“The weight of your heart” refers to the Ancient Egyptian belief that when a person dies and travels to the underworld, their heart is weighed on a double pan balance scale against the feather of the goddess Maat, who personifies order, truth, and reason.
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