The Power Lost

It's not about money and sex, or money and land.

It's not about business and schemes.

It's rooted in the laughter of children

and their dreams of toys and mountains of ice cream.

Childhood changes, evolves into frantic impulse

and a dire fear of loss, being alone, or being dead.

No matter how noble the beginning,

the middle leads to misjudgment and cheating,

violating the rules because they are so hard.

Then comes the big plans and the sure paths

to happiness, and success, and comfort, and belonging.

Having lost the path to happiness we invent our own way.

We make joy a thing that can be invented, received or planned

like a party with drugs and flickering lights,

a wild dance under a dark circus tent of sweat and dreams,

rapid movement and deafening sound, a suppression of reason

that makes us believe that freedom and happiness are

embodied in the sacred ritual of surrendering control.

Happiness is putting skis on one's soul and sending it

sliding and singing down a trail of burning ice.

Is it true that I will be happy if I act happy?

I feel like the forced dancing and careless abuse

of my body is perhaps the announcement of all hope lost.

All celebrations and memorials are freakish ceremonies

acknowledging that happiness must be generated by

a machine that is lost and for which I have no training.

Let me discard my meaningless daily routines as a

form of behavioral trash that needs to be discarded

and vaporized and sent drifting over the trees like

incense carrying the taint of religious destiny

floating around and into my cup of emptiness.

Our world is broken but we have lost the knowledge

of how to fix it. I feel broken and I am certain that

the world cannot fix me. I know too much.

I know that the corruption of goals and intentions

is as assured as the sprouting of grasses

and the formation of clouds.

What a philosophy is this, that I can repair the world

by giving up my desire to be in control.

By letting go, by handing the plan over to those

blessed with the absence of conscience,

I will do what needs to be done.

I will save my rejected civilization after it has been

summarily burned to the ground, or before.

Even if being truly happy is impossible,

let us pretend to be happy, act happy.

As it seems the gods of the universe

practice deception. Let us do the same.