Awake

I've spent most of my life

Observing
What our supposed humanity
Imposes
Upon our actual humanity
I've seen what it does
To the soul
To the life and spirit

In us all

Our societies institutions,
Each of its grandest ideas

Each of the collective manifestations
And every one of our leaders

The political, the religious
…And even the spiritual
All, possessed…

By the feeble minded attempts
To reach our highest
To reach the divine visions
In us all
But they never seem to quite measure up
These would-be heavenly institutions
Ways to solve any and all problems
Paths laid with good intentions
But they always fall short
Always fall
Eventually…

We are divine
But we are not here to be divine
And every time we try
We'll fall short of the divine
Because in our minds
We know…
Only in our hearts
In our souls
Can that divine power shine

Society, all of us assembled
In our ‘collective’ humanity
We conquer by divide…
We separate and label
And give name to all the animals
To the sky, the creatures

Each of the features
And everything else

We label to separate
The feministic, and misogynistic
The right, and left
The conservative, and liberal
The democrat, and republican
The Muslim, and the Jew
The Christian, and the Atheist

Coins, each with 2 sides

One and the same
But labeled to divide

But to live, to truly live…
It’s not about being divided
And it’s not even about being one

From what I’ve seen

And what inspires me…
It’s about being yourself
Living fearless and unapologetic
With heart, and passion!
Character, and substance!
And true compassion…
The power comes from defiance
Energy, and inspiration
Come from this same defiance
Defying all that ‘humanity’ imposes
Upon the breath of the heart
This conformity,
The death of the soul
Slow death!

The slowest of the slow…

And after living this much of my life
Searching for the balance
Between
Conforming
And feeling my heart scream
The only thing that inspires me
Are the acts of people
Who defy outwardly
This delusion in conformity
There are at least three ways
Of looking at anything
At it… In it…
And through it…
The only way to listen to your heart
Is to listen to your own voice
And your own voice only!
Not the voice of reason
Nor the voices

Of humanity’s betrayal and treason
People will always, often
Try to talk to you about what’s important
But no two people
Share the exact same beliefs
And no two people
Are ever fully connected at the seams
So any lofty denial

Should never be
An ambition
Especially not the idealized entrapment

Of normalcy…

Trust nothing
Yet ignore nothing
Watch the seeds
That people around you
Attempt to plant
See through their ambitions
Their agendas
Then release yourself
From their expectations of you
Give yourself the gift
Of maniacal unapologetic laughter
In the face of their manipulation
In the wake of their imposed guilt
And never breathe either in
People will always find ways
To have their feelings hurt
And maybe it will be your face that they see
When finally
They scare themselves
Awake!

ⓒ 2010 Shawn Michael Quinn

Easier

If you really want to understand,
To see
Where a person lacks integrity
Listen
To the words they choose
To the temper they lose
Every word has multiple meanings
And every word gives away
Its definitions
In the way it sounds
In the way it was constructed
And in the way they chose
The context of the crafted prose

We all get what we came here for
Our hands hold the only guilt
For opening each of these doors
Its the difference between
The mistake
And holding onto the belief
That you didn’t make it
Retrospect and hindsight aligned
The proof following in the unfolding of time
In the so many ways

I've so often lost my way

So many of the harmful influences
I’ve time and again allowed in
So many of the illusions
Where I've put on the blinders
And believed them in
I sit and watch it all
The past playing like
Black and white projections
Upon the wall
The friends come, gone,
And come again…
The love come, gone,
And come again…
The potential come, gone,
And come again…
But the tiger doesn’t change his stripes
And the angst ridden boys
Can’t let go of the strife
But like they say
Can’t lives on wont street
And no matter how much you'd like to
You’re never quite able
To wish that away

It’s obvious

That the most of us
Don’t ever really ‘grow up’
We simply choose a direction
And unfortunately
Through the recapitulation of the path
And the recabitchulation of the wrath
I've come to realize
That the hate

Has always been
Easier

ⓒ 2010 Shawn Michael Quinn