The Future of an Illusion

Sitting at a café

Over the smell of coffee

Scents of car fumes, vomit and piss

Worm their way into your nose.

 

The men, women, children

Pass you by without a glance

Each one on their own way

As uncaring feet pound pavement.

 

Indifferent people in expensive suits

Walk by tourists objectifying with cameras

Who accidently capture in their frames

The cold and the old slouching through the streets.

 

Even relaxing at the table

You feel caught up in the streaming crowds

As if you were being swept away

By these forces fighting for control.

 

As you sit as idle observer

To the worried pace of the city streets

You can sense the blind and frantic power

Of those who feed off our illusion.

 

(This illusion lies in each of us

When we close our eyes to the waking world

And believe that we could be happy

In our isolation from reality)

 

You can see it in the passers-by

Whose eyes focus intently ahead:

Afraid to look at other faces

As if they feared the connection.

 

Many imprison themselves in aesthetics

Of glass steel towers looking down on the earth

And drive isolation’s grim repetition

In a hopeless effort to make their own world.

 

Our illusion puts them there

When we do not question the surrounding order

Whose existence allows us to live in comfort

Insulating our delusions.

 

Our ignorance demands their ignorance

Which caters to our selfishness

And divides the passing days

With the rhythm of their control.

 

Their thoughts structure steel geography

That dreams that it could scrape the sky

And make its mark on the heavens

By countermanding nature’s will.

 

But nature stands indifferent to

Man’s attempt to supersede

Its will that gives to him his arrogance

That leads him towards his own destruction.

 

But I call you from this nature now

To return with me to where I stand:

On this mountain with the trees

Who beckon with their open branches:

 

Do not fight against nature’s rhythm

That springs the flowers from the ground

As it wills the sun to set upon us

And gives us the food to carry on.

 

I see myself as this reality

As feet take care to tread on soil

To avoid crushing the delicate petals

That smile upward towards the sun.

 

Time provides the future harvest,

But of its success, time will tell.

So I stand here with my garden hoe

In loving silence, tilling the land.

To breath the air the sky provides

Takes me from my restlessness:

Watching the ground provide the future,

Submitting myself to nature’s pulse.

 

But the scenery of planned geometry

Which covers soil with concrete slabs,

As if embarrassed by earthly origins,

Tries to move to a different rhythm:

 

The glare of halogen eyes that stare

In unquiet nights in impatient lines

Find their way towards distant houses

That protect their owners from working lives.

 

This world screams out from its distortion

Of nature’s will that lies ignored:

It lays the path of its own destruction

As it claims its own power to endure.

 

But nature’s spirit will always triumph,

Whether through man’s self-inflicted end

At the hands of his selfish illusion,

Or through his careful heeding of the truth:

 

This world that’s lost its quite places

Demands we become its place of quiet;

To silence the thoughts that construct man’s world,

So that we absorb ourselves in nature’s will:

 

The heart that beats inside you now

Beats not for the one in whom it dwells,

But allows nature a fleeting glimpse

Of itself through conscious human eyes.

 

This truth whispers even now

From the deafening world of the city streets

That hurries towards its ignorant end

As it attempts to escape its fate.

Do not forsake the earth in waking life,

And wait for death to pull you into the soil

To meld with nature’s majestic cadence

And be one with your reality.

Reviews

[eatmills]

Really enjoyed the piece; I often feel this way myself. Why does man chose not to live in harmony with Earth?

I enjoyed the metaphors greatly. I also really enjoyed your opening, what else is there to do while sitting out in the patio of the city, but to be bewildered by man's ego.

Keep on writing.

[paradise]

escpecially long but was a very nic poem loved the beggining and the ending great way to end it had alot of great qualitys and flow to it :)
Ending all time fav
Do not forsake the earth in waking life,

And wait for death to pull you into the soil

To meld with nature’s majestic cadence

And be one with your reality.

[Strawberry Spices]

I love this, especially the part about

"You can see it in the passers-by
Whose eyes focus intently ahead:
Afraid to look at other faces
As if they feared the connection."

Because it's true. That's the way people are when they're walking around. You really showed how people are in the world.

[Sagar Waingankar]

Beauty of a write and framing of words! It makes me think over and over,

'Watching the ground provide the future,
Submitting myself to nature’s pulse.'

Excellent. Thanks for sharing brother!

[Poetic Beauty]

This is real and strong. Many cities are like this and many turn a blind eye to the cities underbelly for we dont not wish to see them. Vivid and clear.

[Cascara (aka Sprint Goe..]

This was real long!

I really adore the observant aspects and honesty of this poem.