Truncating Life

Truncating life is to remain focused on stuff,

finding more fault than accuracy in honesty choices,

rejecting efflorescence of one’s inner rococo,

and opting instead for an inflexible complaint of political apathy.

And what of comfort?

Succumbing to quantitative over qualitative goals,

is to detour from magnificent achievement,

even as paychecks may supply consolation,

yet come at a price one’s psyche can ill-afford.

Is truncation unavoidable?

Might we have innate wiring for abbreviating life’s breath?

Do we place self-promotion before social reform in our priorities of conscience?

And what of culture’s malaise falling into the abyss,

continuing as the ideological locus of fear,

that force that inhibits self-expression of “unfashionable” or “non-pc” ideas,

promoting instead its free fall into the dark tyranny of conformity,

feeding the public little more than mediocrity of topics and modes of articulation.

Are we less inclined to pursue the refining of thought,

more interested in building and controlling technologies that will yield

a cushier material-well-being?

Are we willingly truncating life?