Human Being

Muscle into metal flesh into plastic
The fading of feeling to twilight of touch
We were so much happier when we were weak
But they tell us happiness is for the strong
The past would prefer that the future be bleak

So they lie to us though they know they are wrong
And gears grind our hearts down until life is such
Heaviness the disappointment so drastic
It becomes nothing less nor more than too much
To bear anymore before we have to speak

If only to recall how it felt once to
Forget about hoping and simply to be
Forget about trying and simply to do
Forget about pleasing them and pleasing me
Yet never to forget remembering you

I exist within my imagination
Imagining myself into existence
A shadow reflecting on its creation
As a web of perspectives held in suspense
A contradiction called a human being

In defiance of the mechanization
Of our once-celebrated fragility
And a past which prefers the future delay
Or else never come at all but if it does
Tomorrow is expected as yesterday

They say we cannot remember how it was
But only the way we imagine it now
We can only see in the present because
This is our human being way of seeing
We have eyes but for what our eyes will allow

I have seen enough to know I want to see
A little peace and quiet here at the last
Not of the rocking chair but of the rocking
Of the womb of life itself and not too fast
So I can hear such wonders as come knocking

The future comes looking a lot like the past
Without of course coming because it does not
There is no escape from this moment somehow
Except to no longer exist but that way
Is closed to me down a dark road I forgot

Blinded for now to momentary seeing
I see all I have is this humanity
Which frustrates those who would control by freeing
The soul increasingly until it is free
A contradiction called a human being

+Steven Curtis Lance



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