Poem: the transcendent thread

1)

My hero worship is dead

like Caesar at the ides of March,

et tu, Brother Brutus?

the Percival armor is demolished

word sword battle axed

bridges burned to charcoal crisp.

Adrenaline rush anger bluff

playground bully stuff

brain maze racing lightning rebuff

argument battle of wits

right and wrong pointless

debating competitions

I win by exiting.

2)

Love is the transcendent thread

the universal umbilical

that leads us back to original.

Families highlight the light and dark

like mirrors of perception

but love remains quietly without question

before time and wounds were formed

love was the original creative force.

3)

Au revoir mon frere, bonne chance.

I think he was a past life acquaintance in France.

During the French Revolution

when we were both male

born into hierarchical stations.

He was an aristocrat.

I was an artist.

I painted a portrait of him with his family.

They were immaculately polished

in plush velvet and intricate lace.

I catered to extremely wealthy people

with extraordinarily expensive tastes

with grand palaces like cities.

I traveled in those privileged circles

as a working-class artisan, never as their equal.

I lost my head along with theirs

for guilt by association.

I have no proof

just the intuitive realization.

4)

Imagination is more important

than knowledge said Einstein.

My brother too, was born on Pi day

and he majored in Physics.

Now he’s convinced that I’m going to hell

for not believing in his god

and that I murdered our mother with stress

but all of her life was already filled with it

long before I came and left their empty nest.

At 22 I was too old to be a runaway

leaving my violent childhood home

wasn’t ever a crime

and I can’t propagate cancer.

Brother, for such an intelligent person

why are you so ignorant?

I can’t forgive him for blaming me for her death. Maybe someday but not now, I can’t forgive the guilt that he vomited on me.

He was angry because I’m a truth-speaker

I’m the youngest, the quiet one

who was secretly bold

brave enough to escape the hold of tradition

the clan mindset, the conformist tribe.

Self-taught to think and decide for myself

that was unacceptable to their cultural customs

where hierarchy and respect is everything.

But when I was a child he provided a net

a sense of protection and safety

he helped the version of me that survived

coped and stayed alive

the me that exists, is in part, due to him.

I will always be grateful to him for that.

5)

I hope to see him sometime again

away from this place of delusion and amnesia.

Earth is a school of remembering

what you knew before and forgot

when you were born.

Life is not a punishment

Life is a reward of creating and learning.

Afterlife is an elevated space of wisdom

from the vantage point of perfect knowing

in the everlasting natural grace of being

to the source that we all launched from

and will return to like sunlit prisms

silver lined clouds swirl

gliding like angel birds.