Am I to fill this page with truth or fantasy
seized of the writer's dilemma which is
whether to indulge the need for entertainment
or present the unvarnished truth to audiences
which themselves contain both enthusiasts.

The novel, the poem, the blog
blurr these lines
and create thereby
mimicries of reality
in which author and reader
painfully subsist--co-conspirators
who don the mutual cloak
which says truth matters not sometimes
in the interest of creativity,
blurrying more the line between
the two; or the reverse; imagination is smothered in the crib
in the service of some bleak notion of what's real;

out of this then is seductive, pseudo-realities
which author and reader mutually inhabit,

preferring sometimes this to Cold Stroke Reality.
 

What then the price we pay
for human kind's obsessive
need for stories' divertments
whose campfire origins
have given us not only hearth
and entertainment itself, but
civilization too.
Stories most often preceed reality as a dream.

What then to sacrifice
if we cruel-stroke and strike away
one or the other;
will it be imagination's need for divertments and future visions
or Cold-Stroke Reality?

Each day, each stroke of the author's pen
yields the answer and reveals
each author's sense of responsibilty, joy
or vision;

or is it that we must stroke Reality first before we can dream
because if we build too many imaginary castles, we'll be tempted
to pack up and live inside them;

and risk that one day we may find
we cannot find our way back or desire to.

And what good would that be; because in the end this tack becomes castles in the air whch can be shattered by surely coming-hulking Reality- and we'll find ourselves strung out on first one,
and then the other-and worse, we conceive that one is the enemy of the other.

Neither sings alone.
Bedrock in all this is when we prefer the fantasy version of our own self
and delusion sets in.

Bedrock is when the fantasy of those we love replaces the real, flawed people there or the reverse-or worse reject flesh and blood, in favor of the dream.

Bedrock is when we cannot conceive any difference between the two.

This is no small thing, this.

What then is true nature; mixed reality-or is it mixed fantasy?
I sit now with my frozen pen, awaiting inspiration's reconciliations.