Look Here

Look back at the shadows of the lost forever.
The child since grown.
The loving parent lost.
The average moments, now precious and ever elusive.

Look forward at the illusions of the hopeful never.
The promises of then.
The solution of time.
The extraordinary moments, yet realized and ever elusive.

Look here at the images of the actual now.
Yesterday's promise.
Tomorrow's longing.
The ubiquitous moments, undervalued and ever elusive.

(reposted from my $100 Million Dollar Lottery Question Blog)

Passing Moon

Passing moon, I see your face
Not long ago, we left this place
Exit Earth, and enter space
Giant step, for human race

That was then, we've played our ace
Passion lost, our new disgrace
Replaced with goals, so commonplace
Passing moon, I miss your face

The Facade

A rickety wall of a special design
With fifty-two bricks from a quarry of mine
Is mortared with greed, a most powerful glue
A devilish deal, stacked up against you

I play my hand as three more walls rise
And proclaim it solid and accept my prize
But before I am through and without a complaint
Conceal what I’ve built with a layer of paint

And content with that, I’m not in the least
But consumed with the job of feeding the beast
And amazed I am with the ease of it all
I build even higher, it never will fall

Then on that day, when the winds barely blew
The face cards gave way from the cracks in the glue
And the laws of physics were suspended no more
The house of cards fell and evened the score

Instead of little, we wanted it all
And now we have nothing and still I recall
That day when we cooked up our little white lies
We swallowed them whole and sealed our demise

And what will we learn while we clean up the mess
Will it happen again, I'll venture a guess
Will we fail to reign in our acts of excess
There's only one answer, the answer is yes

Vicious Circle

Those miserably confined to a sea of mediocrity
Scour among their consuming bleakness
For a modicum of hope, the faintest sign
For a lone individual willing to rise above the rest

Blissfully buoyed by the hope of the masses
The chosen sole rises higher and higher
On the increasing winds of the collective proclamations
To a towering position over the rest

Perched on its precarious pedestal
The anointed one adorns a mask
Hoping to conceal all fear and doubt
As it basks in the flashes of the moment

Fueled by the worship of the populace
The anomaly rises to excess and estrangement
And begins to reject the illuminated lie
While hiding from the insatiable source of its own demise

But the weight of the legend takes its price
When eventually the adorned takes a common misstep
And by the gravity of mass contempt, the idol falls
And the capricious crowd devours its Host

And while in the bowels of those who bore it
The ostracized finds little solace in its infamy
While the devoted aggrieved and full of indignation
Tend to the wounds of the misled

But soon the scornful laments the scorned
And in return, the star faintly glimmers
Illuminating tempered hope for all
And re-elevating the depressed to a modest level

And now the devoted are myopic no more
Having seen their adoration in its true light
Abused, broken and grounded by the weight
Of its previous position at the pinnacle

And as quickly as all was forgiven, all is forgotten
And again the bleakness of normalcy raises its head
To quench its voracious appetite for another victim
And the whole vicious circle repeats itself evermore

Safe

Safe, sound and trapped just the same
A cage replete with its own sense of shame
Move quickly, the door it is open, ajar
Bask in the shadows to conceal the deep scar

Breathe ever deeply, a lung of fresh air
Exhale the toxin of doubt and of scare
Over your shoulder from where you once came
Freedom replete with its own sense of shame

Grope in the darkness for new chains that bind
Panicked and frenzied, your new daily grind
Snuff out your passion and smother your hope
Drink the elixir, a new way to cope

Find yet another new place to dwell
Give up once more, your new private hell
A cage replete with its own sense of shame
Safe, sound and trapped just the same

Blind Man's Doubt

Now we discard the old
How could we be so blind

And celebrate its loss
And strike it from our mind

Then we embrace the new
Invest in it our hope

And condemn ourselves to
The same piece of rope