Who Are You

[Photo by Alexander Joslizen Baker at StudioJoslizen ]

What makes you

you?

Is it what people see
that you do?
what we put in pictures
on display
and the culmination then
in what others say?

Is it our face?
the things that don’t seem to change
the stories we repeat
or like clothes and rooms
we rearrange

until..

in front of mirrors we can confidently stand
acceptable, we hope, citizens in the projected land

until…

sorry I’m roaming, if you will
the reason, to this point, I keep coming back
is that all these things
like youth
they pass

but in the end
all our questions
in some way they ask

Who are you?

what is your value?

and we tend to believe how to others we seem
and to navigate this play
we merge with the mask
until..

doesn’t it seem there are moments life asks us to be still?
when uneasy truths reach us
like light through the glass

and we feel

what we try not to show

until, if we stay busy enough, we hope,
we’ll find peace at last
and everyone who doubted us will know…

who.. are.. we?

the better or worse versions of what the dice roll of culture expects us to be?

whats underneath
 and inside
the lines with which we divide and define?

How could we be one…

if we invented the gun?

don’t the words that we become
teach us from whom we have to run?

aren’t our differences the basis of our pride?

If our thinking proves that we are
thank you Descartes
how do you explain the part…

wait… just for the sake of the human state…
have you ever stopped long enough
in the middle of the race
to watch the thoughts wander
until they fall back in space

and do you then vanish
like this house made out of clouds
that to exist requires that we repeat and believe

the script

that tells you and me

each how to be

They say the axis of the turning of the tide
depends on the shifts within the dimension inside
where thoughts of who we are come and go
and so look like lies

where maybe God

this whole time

has been watching

from our eyes

Do you believe
that underneath the endless storms of the mind
there is a part in each one of us that is not afraid to die
that holds the sharpest feelings
like a mother holds her child
that runs like a river between all things
and times

Sometimes Life forces us to stand in the fire

until…

no thought can save us and falling in
we reach the sky

I see you

past your name, and your job, and your tribe

the part that once we return to

we will understand why

who we think we are

is why we fight