Self Fish

We do not give a serpent

When a child asks for fish

But if they ask for serpent

Should we place one on their dish?

Love is not giving everything

That other people wish

But giving what is best for them

And teaching them to fish

Every Single Moment

Galaxies once moved to a motion of our breath

Planning endless years rhymed in reason with the rest

Every dream we realized

Every sense we feel

Every single movement of the tide

Entering the darkness there is nothing that we fear

Knowing all's eternal, but in this life it's concealed

Will the winds of violence mar the surface of the heart

Will the feeling leave us as we part

Wondering I hunger

Parched tongue, I thirst

Where's the cooling waters 

That once quenched against the worst

Severed from your presence

But I feel you every hour

Oh, how silence is a framing power

Though mountains come between us

It's clear, you're near

And at the dawn of immutable strength we rise

Never clearer visions touched our eyes

Every single moment that we live, we feel

Every single movement of the tide

Every single motion ever made was real

Every single dream realized revealed ours

Labels

The label said “Do not remove”

“Made in the U.S.A.”

“Warning”

“Fragile”

“This side up”

“Keep cool”

“Refrigerate”

I could not tell what was inside 

I opened up the parcel

A can of food 

The label torn 

I read a tiny morsel

They listed all ingredients

Preservatives and grams of fat

All nutrients and calories

Yet how it tastes 

It can’t tell that

They bleached

Enriched

And processed

Adding artificial flavor

So what I ate

I am not sure

Regardless of the savor

How much of life is just like this

They put us in a box

They label us

They list our parts

And here’s the paradox

They add their phony flavor

Till identity’s concealed

And most of us are satisfied

With Good House Keeping’s seal

The Nether Self

While musing on identity

To find me something lasting

I asked myself, “Just who am I?”

To which I replied, “Who’s asking?”

The Snapshot

I showed my friend a photo

Of a place he’d never seen

“When did you go there?” he inquired

I said, “I’ve never been.”

“Where did you get the picture then?”

I replied, “In a camera.”

He laughed, “Who took the photograph--”

“A magical chimera?”

I told him, “No one took it.”

“It just always was inside.”

“Okay, where did you find it?”

“Mr. smarty pants--no lies”

“The camera came together by itself.”

Was my reply

“I witnessed it myself,”

“It happened right before my eyes.”

He stared and said, 

“You take me for an idiot--don’t you?”

“Your story is impossible.”

“You know it isn’t true.”

“If chance could pull together,” 

“The complexity imbued”

“Manifest in a camera”

“Their still remains a clue.”

“How could the camera”

“Possess such an image in itself,”

“Which conforms to reality

“Exactly with no help?”

“A photo cannot preexist”

“The object that it captures,”

“Nor record what it has not been exposed to.”

I said, “Rapture!”

“The chance that life”

“Spontaneously came to be simply by chance”

“Strains all rationale,”

“With its intelligence enhanced.”

“When you uncover in the mind”

“A wealth of innate truth,”

“It had to preexist somehow.”

“Inside you lies the proof.”

“The soul and its existence,”

“The mind’s divine design.”

“No greater proof nor witness”

“Then yourself you’ll ever find.”

The Inner Voice

From whence the voice of conscience fares

I’d swear that it is me

But how I came to know so much

Is a mystery indeed

Technological Utopia

Above the quest of life the charge to gather data

Across the vast expanse of space they race

But can't quite place the strangers face within the mirror

Warped minds of genius delve into their mental strata

Like psychopathic intellectuals stimulating their gray matter

This could be the end of civilization as we know it

With all the aces in our hands weave the technological age of man

Reduce the chance for human error with automation

Employ machine to mold and wean the new and rising generation

Blank expression

No reaction

Lack of feeling

Void of passion

Cold and empty

Moral vacuum

Numb to conscience

Psyche entombed

Here's a question 

Can you answer

What is man

And whence his hankering

To know the reasons

Why the languor

State your logic

Show your rational

The perfection of a superior race

In the interest of the species seal your fate

Meet your genetic mate

When futile lives ask why their here they'll find the answer

Their empty eyes now shed a tear

Well we're so sad

This could be the end of humanization as we know it

They'd trade logic for love now, but have forgotten how to show it

Really think your in the pink, but this time you've finally blown it

In all your progress you never planned

For an oversight that produced the damned

Yet the atheistic Utopian turns to machine

Enters this command

Can the technological age of man

With its logic tell me who I am