Airless Man Caves
by Odin Roark

We love to beat ourselves up.

We venture out from our cavern of dread
to once again feel the frustration of looking
for that special dance partner
in an empty ballroom,
our sanity always on the verge of…

Yes, that’s what we do.
We look for a finite connection,
for the single answer
to suffering’s multiple questions.

How adolescent our bravura
as we trust the armor
fortifying our exposed heart
to always fend off
any conspiratorial emotions,
buried childhood remembrances,
parental battles with each other and you.

How real-time naive we remain,
conceptualizing happiness
without a willingness to pay a personal price,
a real experience beyond the concept of love,
where we learn full enjoyment of pleasure
is bundled expertly with experienced pain.

We wonder how our heart can be aflame,
but never open because starting fires
is the only passion we understand.

Or…

Upon losing ourselves in the excitement,
the euphoric possibility that “this is it,”
we continue avoiding the first glimpse
of our inherent and delicate vulnerability,
the tripping lever that sends us packing.

How persistent the obsession,
our battling the dread of intimacy
while remaining infatuated with possibilities,
rejecting reality that commitment
requires acceptance of an end game.

But, oh how seductive the rear-view mirror,
that ever present tool of caution,
ever ready to warn us of danger,
only to be ignored in the heat
of our high-speed commitment
to self-rage.

Our crash and burn habit
is often the only way
to chalk up another entry,
into our victimization syndrome.

For we create the same arrogant bluster
over and over,
allowing frustration to turn into anger
into self-loathing,
into sucking all the oxygen
out of our man-cave.

There is another alternative, however…

Step outside our cave of conceit.

Avoid the suffocation of false pride.

Take a deep breath of what’s beyond just us.

Epiphanies await the courageous.