Leave behind these phantoms
These weightless shapeshifting images
That fill you vision and leave you wondering what lies beyond
Yet too scared to even look
Leave behind the soft embraces of these quiet deaths
That pull you in closely, whisper that you’ll be okay
That you never have to leave their caresses
That you are where you need to be
Leave them. Throw their arms off yourself. Run.
Plunge into the cold soft viscera of the world
Into its labyrinthine crevices, its echoing canyons
Into the sun. Bask
In the shade of a grey overpass adorned with metal trees
Whose limbs will never know the feet of birds
Then venture further and find the things themselves
Their tangled wood and moss and dead and dying leaves.
Find that the sum of a million imperfections and shortcomings
Is something no human mind could conceive. Something
That lacks nothing. Not a representation, but real.
Find that you stand amidst it, that you are swallowed up.
Reach out and touch the solid roughness
Of the world. Feel the undying energy of the river
And the slow unstoppable flow of the seasons.
Weep for each death and celebrate each new life.
And return. The phantoms still haunt you,
Still wrap their clinging hands around your neck
But they’re faded. No danger lies in their eyes
Only emptiness. Finally, see the vapor of their promises.
Know that they can be escaped, if not killed
That they can be ignored, if not erased
That you can live a life in which they recede into the shadows
All but gone, all but dead.
And know that they will never tarnish the things that are real
That their insubstantial essences are impotent
They writhe, shadow-boxing. You stand apart
A part of the world of people, places, things.
The images are dark and twisted but is that the fault of the world?
Somewhere these ghosts become not photographs
But paintings that feature your fears of what might be
Fears that forgot what is.
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