That Special Place

There’s a place
we’d all like to be.
Call it utopian.
Call it ethereal.
Call it…

Imagination?

How about the real?
That politically correct state of mind?

Do other people’s sense of right and wrong
have license to pound their dogma into our heads,
foist guilt onto us if we don’t opt for their “right way” to think,
to be?

For many…

Just to contemplate something
that might be pure, unadulterated imagination
is too far “out there,”
called by some as the quintessential copout,
making them cringe in their boots,
feeling as though a mental weggee
threatens to strangle their potency.

Copout?

Consider where we would be as a species
without the full thrust of imagination,
that one-of-a-kind invention of thought,
that as often as not,
makes greater sense than bowing to
the perceived status quo.

Such is the plight of the artist and scientist
having to live in a world of often imposed ways of life as others see it,
knowing there’s more for the mind and heart to massage,
reform, and consider as a step forward in discovery,
another rung on the ladder to humanity’s greater self-realization
shared by both the artist, scientist and patron.

After all…

If the creative mind truly wants to contribute to broadening perception,
opting to offer considerations that truly advances insight,
as a starting point, he or she must accept there’s nothing prideful
in ignoring one’s own inner truth,
that ability to think and explore independently,
that undeniable fact of “self” that if disciplined,
has no time for acquiescent pandering to
what many others believe is the “only authentic” existence.

Quite a ride this…

Daring to rise above the fray,
consider the ethos of self,
the rewards of accepting faults
along with the excellence of being
truly who they actually are.

Some might attest
such an attitude too highbrow,
too elitist.

For many of us, however
such a position is just the beginning,
the move into the landscape of sentience,
void of hesitation into the unknown,
a naked stance before creation,
finding there’s nothing to hide,
nothing to make excuses for,
nothing to convince and lure one back to
that other place called accepted consensus.

No conscious person should live and die
in an environment that labels imagination as inferior,
to the kind of certainty that seeks
to imprison unabashed creativity.

Yes, as this poet has said many times before,
“we are all creative.”

We just have to will ourselves
to that special place.

And…

It’s never too early or too late
to exercise the commitment.