Looking for a way out of this box 

 

I do not want to lose the box 

 

Or the thing that thinks and feels 

 

And searches to escape. 

 

 

“Everything is infused with ego,” 

 

Said Dr. Freud and gave Bill Clinton his cigar 

 

Who wondered what to do with the burning tip 

 

And closed his ears when told, 

 

“Just smoke the damn thing!” 

 

 

This is a sign of our age. 

 

We do not know what to do with symbols 

 

And suck on them for significance 

 

When they are just there to feed us 

 

Not lead us to victory 

 

In the battle against evil. 

 

 

But in the grand vista of the wide world 

 

The puny concerns of mere mortals 

 

Have no effect and are no more real than smoke 

 

To the concrete and solid pleasures of power. 

 

It sits in the centre of existence like a vacuum 

 

That devours everything and yet 

 

Makes it all whirl, revolving towards the 

 

Inevitable end of complete destruction. 

 

 

 

Oh if only we could pass through that singularity 

 

And emerge newborn and shorn of loss, 

 

And lambs and lions could plow the earth 

 

Without end or purpose. 

 

And still we would be whole, 

 

The green earth repairing every scar we inflicted 

 

And forgiveness would flow over us like a flood 

 

Til we drowned in our own innocence 

 

And drank it all like the Chinese brother 

 

Who imbibed the sea. 

 

Expanding like a balloon 

 

And filled with the loss of guilt 

 

We would float away into the nothingness that 

 

We were always searching for. 

 

 

And just before the conscious thought would leave us 

 

Just before the box and the thing that thinks would disappear 

 

We would know that hope and despair are the same, 

 

Different angles of viewing 

 

What is after all, all we have: 

 

Our life and what happens in it.