Tip of the iceberg

In the darkness took shape a little being,
Of immaculately untainted conception,
A clarity of purpose, whose cold insensibilities
Had neither to do with the cloying excesses of social magnanimities
Nor the raging passions of self-perpetuation.
But a single-minded hunger to absorb images:
Without a sight for aesthetic fashions, indiscriminate hydroxyl groups,
To pulsating blue giants
To the great shadows of clouds in intergalactic wildernesses.
The hunger would burn up this being’s essence, yet was never sated
And while headed down the inevitable path of finitude,
Fear was as distant as its own beginnings.
In the twinkling of an eye (which it would have endeavored to absorb had it known of such a happenstance),
It would flit from world to world,
Nebula to solid rock,
Inferno to icy interstices, purged out by former solar systems.
Until in its great venture
It stopped before a lake of mercury,
A placid mass of improbable occurrence found under a coincidence of unlikely circumstance
That smacks of predestination OR, just as likely [sic] the projected intercrossing of two infinities of parameters:
Here catching a glimpse of self, and of all the imbibed realities available for visual consumption,
It set about documenting every set and subset of it own being,
A task which simultaneously fueled and exhausted its finite resources
Until stuck in a nauseating fractal of unending redocumentation of documented images.
The poor dumb beast, that neither desires nor resents you sympathies,
Stood frozen in an obese equilibrium, a stationary Niobe of unceasing activity.
If you find yourself in a quandary give thought to this that still stands by that forsaken lake on that tired world out there, and thank your stars that you have no purpose. Or that you do. Or something, something…moral.

Testimonial

Born in a desert
The red sun framing your head
As it sinks below the seething sand,
Your eyes begin to take form,
Small embers of rage,
Tiny reflections of the day’s glory.
An even deeper pool of regret and sadness
Wrought wrinkles around the corners of your once smiling mouth
And the fallen grace that used to dance upon your lips
Now flounders like a flapping fish.

I was told to offer up a eulogy to your still-living self
To mention in high-flung verse
The deeds that sharpened the cursive history writ in stone
But I found none that stand in Time’s withered gaze
The Old Man just reads on past skipping the parts that detail your ad-ventures.
So what remains behind, for me to speak of.
Nothing.
Is that defeat?
Are you one of the billions that accept a soft spot in the grass and pass the moments of their lives in humility
Grateful to count themselves amongst the infinite,
And unwilling to waste a breath exhorting ambition and fame?
Can you find yourself amongst the thronging brotherhood
Where uniqueness is not measured by how high you stick out,
But how tall you stand in your own mind’s eye?

There is no eulogy for you tonight, my child.
Your twin self refuses to offer you up the cushion of self-indulgence.
Choose your flame: regret or fierce belonging.