Smarts

Adorning your mediocrity with an heir of simplicity,
I find joy in the minute details,
make sand castles out of grains of attraction
build it to the highest honor, but always
lie defeated in the true, lowly reflection.

Meanwhile a man and a woman make a pact
to find themselves before settling down,
to quest for an old man on a mountain
handing out medicine for their trials
treasure maps for their goals,
a shame they don’t know what needn’t be taught about insanity.

Do you ever get so tired of the routine
so tied to it that you start to enjoy it, then
marry it, sewing excuses to stay within it:
The abusive relationship to a faceless entity
who wants nothing but mindlessness and cooperation?

What adjoins us to this stillness?
The only species with the crown of cognition, we flush it,
become every primate who ever picked it's ass,
clapped and laughed.

The mind is not a canvas, but the obscure tool we must invent a function for,
find meaning for,
create something out of and onto ourselves with.

After all, that mind, like life, is the sunset you can’t see by the minute
until every color has passed
and suddenly it’s night.