Poetry Time

Poetry Time

Today we are featuring a poem excerpted from the book Collateral Intentions by Constantine Dhonau. Constantine is sharing a few poems with us between August 12th and February and he will be dropping in for an interview coming up on December 18th. He would love for you to visit him via: 

https://constantinedhonau.com

https://linkedin.com/in/cdhonau 

Blank Page (by Constantine Dhonau)

A new page

Another page

A different page

Yet remarkably the same as the others

 

Full of potential because it is blank

It is mine to create

Each day I step out of the shower

Naked

Blank

Free to create me as I see fit

 

Who is this person I decide to be every day?

What rules and restrictions have I set for myself?

Well, isn’t that what I’m here for?

To figure out who I am?

I’m not so sure that’s the point

 

Some scars and tattoos have left marks

Stories

Possible restrictions, but trivial

Every new day I decide to be

Me

 

Whoever that is

Whomever that may be

I have carefully constructed 

Crafted

Formulated

My Self

 

Such a fleeting thing I am

This Me

Moments of pure insanity

Of surreality

Of the realization that I could do anything completely unpredictable

Completely un-Me at any moment

 

Anyone could

Moments of deciding not to

Of eliminating the seemingly outrageous 

 

And living them to the bare minimum

Disconsidering the alternatives

Taking these things, we would not or could not or should not do

For granted

 

These things

These horrible things 

Sometimes wonderful dreams

Nightmares

Endless possibilities of actions and non-actions

Causes and effects

Items of insanity shelved on social norms built by society

Us

We

I

 

Who am “I”?

What is “Me”?

What manner of creation am I?

Do I construct myself or do we?

 

Who came first in my perception?

The squawking chicken of society?

Or the unborn egg of me?

Who might I be?

At another place?

In another time?

 

It would seem that I am infinitely malleable

Infinitely foldable and adaptable

It is simply different choices being made

Small ones

Within the parameters which allow my Self to remain

 

Difficulty due to indecision

Tangents 

Possibilities 

Regularities 

Singularities

Alone

Alone

Free to create my Self

To be born or created as the first or only person

It is up to me to decide

Completely free

 

Alone

I decide what my hands are for

Language

Thoughts before language are abstract representations

Alone

 

What is a human?

Up to me

What is a person?

Up to me

Who am I? 

Who is this Me?

Up to me

Completely free

No society

No squawking chicken

Just the egg

 

Close your eyes now

Silent…There is nothing…

Only the egg

Full of potential

 

I define myself by my surroundings

Strip away all I know to nothing 

And I am nothing

In the blankness, there is me

 

No society

Interaction is slavery

Life is conformity with each added element

Go back now

 

Blank 

Just Me

Add a tree

With this one element, I am forced to interact

 

This element will soon define Me

This one element beside myself

I will spend my life interacting with that tree

Constructing Me, all along

 

I will climb it, stare at it

Trying to figure out its meaning

My meaning

Life’s meaning

100 years of me, a tree, and nothing

 

Then it’s over

That is existence for me

Infinite moments and endless possibilities reduced to a simplified attempted constant of a Self

Am I an extension of the tree or the tree of me?

 

I could be reduced

But there’s more

This vacuum

This void

This construct of regulations based on decisions I never had the chance to make for myself 

Only choosing what was offered to me

 

You see now

Look at me

See what I am, as far as you’re concerned, and what you make me

And so you are what I make you

The empty mind is full of possibilities

But it is a slave to what it already knows

 

So here I am

Here you are

Here we are

Welcome to my, your, our crisis

The existential crisis

The emptying

Deconstructing

 

It’s complicated in the simplest way or simple in the most complicated way

I don’t know for sure, but I’m here to say that I have a problem

I think we all do

It is our turn to decide 

The more we realize that

The more powerful we become

 

I am free to take the wheel, though it is not my decision alone

Nor is it yours

Together, we decide

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