Asides

On a night long since forgotten

When the shimmering strip of our home galaxy

Illuminated faces of silent wonderment

Our place was settled, and the cosmos reached out

And welcomed us as its children

The cosmos never forgets, to a degree that

An elephant would find excessive-

It sits, Indian-style and whispers amongst itself

As though Earth is a grand theater and

The cosmos has not been shushed by a

Red-clad usher

Do its children remember that night,

Before the calendar informed us that we

Were hurtling forward, when every night was a festival

Of the always-renewed covenant

We, the children borne of stars and time

Gaze up into the mother’s eyes

And see with perfect clarity and see

The unity of the past

Psychosis, the paranoia of intense scrutiny

Every man a spy, every place a trap

Adding locks to a door of the mind, only to hear

The knob turning and fear

Flooding forth and bringing with it

Cold sweats and labored breathing once again.

An impregnable maze assembled

Frantically

One night, stretching into timeless void

Great ideas that would stand the test of time

A week later, returned to cryptic signs

Incomprehensible. Was this me?

Conjured as a shade, a joker, a

Mummers farce with bells and painted faces?

The paranoid have enemies, this is true

But do they fade

Dissolve

Turn into a river of sand pouring from

Our clenched fist?

Our existential threats rise and fall

And one day we will confront them

But shadows are not soldiers,

And they leave no mark for others to see