Roiling Élan Vital
by Odin Roark

Sloshing’s ebb and tide,
The incessant flooding of eyes
Meant to see,
Not to struggle from drowning
By tears once precious,
Now gushing out of control.

Foundations shifting,
Platelets of mortal existence,
Now an emotional tsunami,
Sucking life into termination’s wavescape,
A super natural faux levitation,
Naiveté’s pretentious passage
Into promised paradise.

No, says he.

Drag me back out into the wide ocean of wonder,
Where first it started,
When senses played freely,
When youth’s dirt roads
And adults’ paved highways
Relayed the cadence of life’s rhythm,
Emerging from the cloud vapor
Of fear-driven skid marks,
911 emergencies,
Sirens speeding to save life from becoming
More of what it was,
Futility’s absorbtion of breath.

So much for life’s luck-of-the-draw,
A chance ticket found in a hand-me-down shirt pocket,
Now but a soggy piece of flotsam
Struggling against the frothy spray of anticipation,
A disintegrating curl of repetitive motion
Destined to leave existence splayed
On destiny’s altar of airless absence,
Displaying our species’ vital organs
Skewed on an obelisk of glinting reflections.

How beautiful might freedom be,
Emerging from this circuitous journey
Dissolving finally into truth,
Accepting perpetuity’s roiling élan vital.