Answers Needing Questions
by Odin Roark

Forever lost are the voices of fearless hope
and long gone are the rains that muddied the foundation

Even as we long for the innocence of heroic action,
Award framed honors were not meant to be for some
With only the mud of experience to nail on the wall.

So say some of the dying

So say some wishing to escape the agony of living.

Is home only found beneath the buttons of shielded resistance?
Can death be the only sanctuary from the insanity of fear?
Is one’s true home but a place locked safely away
beneath some naked honesty known by only a few ?

Might those who dare
to seek out that place
where stripped away layers of protection,
saturated with the tears of elusive answers,
find nature’s compass pointing to yet another unexpected direction?

And is that direction
seen only by those whose open buttons,
ravaged by wanderlust and the shedding of mud caked insulation,
who leap from the twisted abyss with abandonment into another time?

What drives us to leave behind the habit of place and protection,
to once again run, walk, and ultimately crawl
through barbed spirals of isolation
into those battlefields of the unknown?

Is it enigmatic, this home we seek,
without assumed walls and roof
or fortified landscape?
Is home only beneath the buttons
where a naked and vulnerable essence beckons one to enter?

And if home be the purpose of the journey
what validation allows entry?

Those with answers must now ask more questions
Cogito, ergo sum