Circuitous History
by Odin Roark

Life’s enrollment,
The obligatory sign up
Taken with eyes wide open,
Fulfills with eyes permanently shut.

Beginnings arouse senses,
Anticipation peaks,
Training starts,
Will softens.

As soundless cat-o’-nine-tails
Flog neuronal servants into submission,
Fusing credos become doctrine;
Work as told,
Play as told,
Dream the only dream,
As told.

Eventually…

Burrowed beneath power’s coliseum,
Delusion’s entrance into fame and fortune’s arena
Becomes engulfed with emotion’s razor-edged projectiles,
Filling the dark tunnels with fear’s confusion.

Greed’s stadium of bloodthirsty privilege
Chants life’s aspiration be given enigma’s sword,
Plunge into the final conflict,
And battle reality’s patient beast.

And so…

Chapters move on,
Even as humankind,
Whose repetition of illusion
Continues layering its mind-embattled dust,
Prepares another barbarous millennium
For narrative’s circuitous history.