Moon at Half Past Noon

Faith is a wonderful thing, they say—
A lens of stained glass, softening the brutal day,
Gilding the unknown with a promised dawn,
A crutch for the spirit, weary and torn.
Yet this cathartic sword, this healing blade,
Can cast a shadow where the light has strayed,
Blinding the eye to what the mind might see,
A chosen dream, a captive melody.

I. Life

To be—a sudden, shocking, solar flare,
A miracle of chance in common air.
A gift, they whisper, as the cord is shorn,
But gravity claims all that is born.
It pulls the petal from the trembling stem,
And draws the proudest king towards the same dark gem.
Does the mere fact of a womb’s warm, watery night,
Grant a special claim to celestial right?
And if my mind holds, like a stolen scroll,
A cryptic scrape of the universal whole,
Does that make me a god, or just a clever ape,
Trapped in a glorious, self-created shape?

II. Love

Love is faith’s secret agent in the blood,
A turncoat wearing many a handsome hood.
Why must we name this beautiful, silent bond,
This quiet gravity that responds and corresponds?
This current that arcs between two separate skins,
A centrifuge of shivers, sighs, and spinning grins,
That turns the solid world to a fuzzy, radiant mess
And knots the careful mind with its sweet carelessness?
Must we cage the wild, unique connection
In a word that demands its own perfection?

III. Consciousness

All questions drain into this shallow, deep pool—
This conscious “I” that I was taught to call a tool.
A mere broth of chemicals, seeking a warmer sun,
A circuit of pleasure when the seeking’s done.
But I remember a time before the name,
A liberation, a pure and untamed flame.
My gaze could unravel the roots from the ancient stone,
And squeeze the vast sky to a jewel I alone owned.
Before I was taught the bargain of pleasure and pain,
I was not in the chaos—I was the chaos, the rain,
The creative void, before faith, love, or life began,
The un-taught sensation of the original man.