Written about a friend some time ago.




How do you see the world?

Action potential and myelin sheathes,
Chemical reaction and axons beneath,
Prefrontal cortex, cerebral pretext,
Nociceptors, photoreceptors,
Malleus, incus, stapes

Intermediates, degenerates,
Packets lost, biases found,
Echoes and shadows
Reflect and refract,
Inference and dissonance
Discern and distort

Veils, mirrors, and lenses:
This is the world through our senses.


A string of theories, a quantum of mechanics,
Higher dimensions, higher abstraction,
Dire confusion, dire explanations,
Things that man was not meant to know,
Places the mind was not meant to go,
Eldritch reality or its perception:

Which is more real?

You say, I know,
I say, You think,

Reality is not perception
The Premise is a deception
The cast stone goes to oblivion
Its ripples continue ad infinitum,
The stone is seen still through its wake
But which is more real? Which is more fake?


Is that the question— or rather
Should we ask, “Does it matter?


No, no, how do you view the world?

I see the falling angel
Meet the ascending ape
.

And the resulting Sapiens,
Discontent with the state he’s in,
Reeking of guilt and wracked with sin,
Dying for more and praying to win,
Wishes ill of his brethren
Doing onto them as they’d do onto him,

After all, to err— is to be human


Dreams deferred, or rejected
And faux-worldly cynicism
With uncalled-for pessimism
In a mood they call perfected


Is it, bad to find such beauty
In damaged goods and tragedy
In flawed existences and futility
And in other reflections of humanity?


So we laugh,
And shrug, assume, and deny,
And continue in our path,
And wonder, with a sigh,
Was it really worth the while?
To have taken the matter into our hands,
To have bitten it off with a smile,
To have done all this, and—?

You say, I think,
I say, You know,

Always dancing upon the brink,
Humanity in dynamic status quo
Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t it beautiful?


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