157: we/are...

we

are

blind

We are blind

the same way as the janitor

who cleans a mirror to

crystal sharpness yet

never sees the reflection;

only the very surface and whether

it is streaked or clear

I think Narcissus got a bad rap.

At least he saw himself beyond

the mere surface of the pool, and

—after all— he didn't know

what he looked like.

Which of us truly knows our self?

Who among us suspects

the vastness of our beauty?

Our looking has so many filters

we dress our sight to protect

ourselves from the elements,

we live in the third person and

listen to a narrator for

all the details and descriptions

          we should be seeing

          should be experiencing for ourselves

all of it adding up to nothing,

keeping us from what is

real, true, beautiful, from

what we might call god

Pythagoreas knew there is no difference between god and geometry

no difference between the creator and the creation

both silently call out to those observing the breath

of what Narcissus saw

when he looked into that pool:

the undistilled genuine

we call nudity

           the nakedness without any idea of clothing

a poem is anything which is defies definition

All this telling is trying to be a poem

everything I'm saying is traveling in a ring

equidistant from the point

           from the whole

I've been struggling to utter,

when I reach the beginning again

take all this distance and divide it by 2 pi

that radius will take you to the center

of what I've been talking around

Narcissus, I know you had no choice

to fall in love with the naked truth

you saw reflected in that pool.

I know Hera disintegrated

all your barriers the moment

you looked into that water and

left you knowing the sudden

absence of distinctions,

beyond mere intellectual knowing.

I know it, but now you've left us

and how am I supposed to convey it?

What am I going to say:

           open your heart to the sky?

           imagine the infinite?

           what is the sound of one hand clapping?

If we knew the truth of anything

whether it was in the form of a

dance, a song, a picture, a reflection,

or a poem

we'd fall in love and be in awe immediately.

We all have shared ourselves with our words

what are we doing

what am I doing with all these words

if not slowly unbuttoning and

stripping down

hoping some one sees our soul?

I'm not here to make distinctions

I'm here to tell you

that each one of you is truly beautiful

that I want to see you all

undress as one with out fear

take off all your thought clothing and

look at each other without reservation.

We could form a union

so complete!

there would only be together with

no such things as

time, distance, or death

no you or I, no she or he,

but only one great soul

How many ways do I have to say it?

Why do we try so hard to be invulnerable,

intimacy is how we become more

than mere shells of human.

When our spirits hold hands

we create every bridge we'll ever need.

Follow that bridge to singularity,

when our multiplicity resolves

(reduces) to one

destroy the radius

to collapse this circumference

I've been saying,

the only thing left standing will be

the essence at the core of:

          we are blind.

©2010 by Jonathan Neske

All rights reserved.

www.neske.biz