*
Reminding myself I am a poet… this is a work from several years ago, exploring my (then) new surrounding by fantastic assumptions of western reality encountered; when leaving a so-called ‘primitive’ culture to become immersed in a culture that can only be described as a ‘passion-of-the-christ-matrix-on-methamphetamines’ world of tanks and drones whose peoples (supporting cast) cannibalize life sustaining nature (we’re all a part of) with near zero grasp of the macro-cosmic intelligence underwriting out existence. So, who/what is ‘primitive’ ?
To know nothing
And joke:
“He is the Ice Man”
Mocks reality unseen.
Fear your shards
Broken mirror
Selves boxed
In Ego
This fear
I see
In failed
Un-slain selves.
Who’d
Dare-risk-break-free
Im-prismed
Peoples
These many
Un-slain self
Image
Self
Serving
Collectively im-prismed
Peoples
Clinging
Each image embodied
In metaphor,
Reflects
Merely
Self-denied-selves-brittle
Where
Nature’s stone
Is-become-but-thin-glass.
Again and again
-seduced-just-so-
Inorganic agonies
In mirror box of ego;
Cowards
Deferential lies, encounter
Preservations illusion
In self-narcissis-self
Not only once.
Fear, yes
To release these many
Almost beings, surround
So many self-seen-self’s
In mirror,
Sentient awareness walled away
Where underlie reflective restlessness.
Cowards cannot scent
Pheromones
Or will image
To be broken when:
Spilt agony
Reflect illusory wound.
Casualties none-the-less
Conceal
Needs, wants,
Delicate hand with diamond tip
(but my tool is my Atlatl)
And arm’s intelligent strength.
Were I to break in,
Self-seen-selves-in-mirror…
…would you bleed
Like ten thousand shards
As abstracts in image cling.
*
Ronald Thomas West 