At the sink

[douglas]

Tonight at the sink

 

I caught myself thinking

 

Who am I?

 

And what should I be?

 

And this is all taking place

 

After 41 years of being conscious

 

Or is that an arrogant thing to say?

 

 

If I’m still confused after all this time

 

Then surely I must be relatively unconscious

 

But I digress!

 

 

So I am thinking

 

Oh so is it about time and experience?

 

Is it about how much knowledge I’ve assimilated?

 

Or how many people I’ve loved?

 

Is it perhaps about what I believe in and can expound upon

 

Full of pomp and pride

 

At dinner parties

 

In front of people who don’t really care what I’m talking about

 

Because they’re just thinking about the next thing

 

That they want to say

 

 

Anyway

 

 

Call me melodramatic

 

Or Woody Allen’esque if you want to

 

But the fact remains that

 

Tonight at the sink

 

I caught myself thinking

 

Who am I?

 

And what should I be?

 

 

And this is all taking place

 

After I almost lost my life

 

One evening when I saw a truck’s headlights hitting me

 

When I flew through the air feeling the

 

Most intense lack of control

 

As my soul was hurled toward death

 

Seven slow times

 

Around and around

 

The crushing metal and the breaking glass

 

And the hissing of the ground

 

 

And so I think

 

It’s perhaps about Karma

 

Or Buddha

 

Or Zen

 

Being in this moment

 

No past, no future

 

Just the present

 

After all this is all there really is

 

 

But being stuck in a dimension ruled by space and time

 

Can make it rather difficult

 

To put into practice

 

This presence

 

 

And so in trying to answer myself

 

I realise that I actually do

 

Indeed know nothing about these

 

Grand existential enquiries

 

It would be nice to be able

 

To attach myself

 

To become ‘something’

 

But would that in its self be the end of enquiry?

 

 

It really doesn’t matter what I think actually

 

Or what you think

 

Or what I think you think of me

 

Or what I thought you thought about what

 

I think I said

 

 

What it’s about

 

Is the end

 

 

And the worst part is

 

Nobody really knows

 

When it’s going to happen

[Benjamin]

Hello Douglas. How refreshingly different. Introspective themes usually mean someone bleeding all over the page. You however, have touched salient personal points as well as philosophical ones. To do this in an overt way in such a short and honest poem is an achievement. “Just another brick in the wall” doesn't cover it and don't worry about being confused. I can assure you that the answers do not come with age; only perhaps a certain tolerance of the human condition. :icon_eek: Benjamin.

[tonyv]

I love the objectivity, the resoluteness, and the realization, Douglas. Some sage words from Benjamin, too.

 

Tony :)

[Tinker]

Hi Douglas, Wow, this is a way to get us all asking questions we thought we had answered a long time ago. I loved how this piece so smoothly moved me down the page, deeper and deeper into thought. Nice.

 

~~Tink

[Gatekeeper]

This is an interesting poem to read in reverse order- last line first and then on up the page until the first line is the last. It can be enlightening to read your own poem that way. Try it. You might find something revealing there.

[eclipse]

interesting and original work-well done

[douglas]

thank you all very much for your time reading the poem and your rich feedback.