No True Knowing

Can you feel it, sitting there, lurching?

Waiting for you to ease up

Even if for only a moment

If only in those dark hours of the night

In that deepest of sleep

It has something to show you

Something to whisper in your ear

An image you have reason to fear

But something you see every day

It even comforts you

In moments of mild despair

And through the lens of your perception

It’s a memory that beacons

Like a guiding light

So why is it that you’re afraid?

Is it because you know

That it’s what you see

That makes you blind

It’s the way you define yourself

That makes you a slave

That takes away your freedom

To simply be

But you crave that admiration

That image that inspires

At least in your mind

But daily you fall short

You feel like a shadow of that man

That in that moment’s perception

May not even have been

But still, you lock yourself in

Craving the admiration

Confident in this affirmed definition

Of you

But you’re not free

Amidst your revelry

Your stink and your sweat

Your refusal to give it up yet

You need to define it

Even though you completely comprehend it

Because it takes the place of that knowing

That there is no answer, no true knowing

ⓒ 2009 Shawn Michael Quinn