An Artificial Life

 

“If I should pass the tomb of Jonah,

I would stop and sit awhile,

for I was swallowed once

deep in the dark,

and came out alive after all.”

~Carl Sandburg

 

 

When you read this,

try thinking me dead.

That way my failings

will all be virtues.

 

I lived an artificial life.

It wasn’t always that way.

At heart I was

a lover of things

untouched by human hands:

a clouded sky,

a woods without a trail,

beaches bereft of prints,

stones made round

by persistent waves of water,

the iterations of stars

that can’t be wielded.

 

Yet, there I was

effecting my comforts

by the false flame of

a battery-propelled candle,

in awe of the light bending

through a counterfeit crystal,

resting upon earth-tone pillows

filled with polyester down,

adrift on a stagnant raft

of a bed wrecked on a fabric sea,

admiring the silk travesty of a rose

cloaked in the dust of my own skin,

aghast at the computer’s

burglarizing reminder

to wish a friend a Happy Birthday,

calmed by an oil infuser aggressively

trumpeting the comforts of cinnamon,

gazing at starlight projected

upon the ceiling

a celestial cluster-rash,

overly warm in sweaters

manufactured from a questionable

3^rd world textile blend,

charmed by my stuffed animal

imitating a freakish cartoon hare,

flanked by shelves of books parading

their diaries of lucid fabrications,

blocked by the faux lids

of the window blinds devised

to keep the sun’s breath

from waking me,

coerced by the tv’s constant

agenda to snare my attention

through a portal of specious lies.

 

I was swallowed by a city

and lived my life

inside a whale.

Who knew this

would be my fate,

to make my home

inside this feral fish?

I decorate with debris.

Unlikely things

wash up when my world

opens its mouth.

Orphaned by the fates

I have taken to

dreaming my way

back to a

traumatic lost

pretense of reality.

I remember

all that I loved

as augmented

by a spyglass.

There is a tunnel

between myself

and something

like a God.

 

That said,

I still live

only for

what I love.

Even its likeness

is enough

to calm and

sustain me.

 

1/4/23