Beyond the Phantoms

Just as amputees
often have the experience
of feeling a missing limb,
many times
we will still remember
our virtual past.  

Our threatened childhood,
our violent youth,
our raped or bullied journey,
these are the ghostly losses
of life that haunt our daily moments
with the terrors to be preyed on
by those
who sift the live data
of our psyches
as they shift to dominate
our every movement
and caloric output.

The phantoms
in our minds
are unmirrored
by the present praise
of strengths
we've yet to realize
and only here
in the now
are we to regain
our health and vitality
in the released
and unadmonished thisness.  

To see myself
as unadorned
by expectation's fatal grasp
and gnashing bite,
to tear away the mask
of the social behemoth's righteousness
in its moral indignation,
to rip apart
the complexed structure
of the cultured pearls
we've come to choke upon,
this is a vow of poverty,
lacking the rich illusions
of dominance
and an authenticity born
of being sycophants
and second class
on the frontier fountain
of the ever-immerging
disembarking truth
of instrospection's inner-vision
and the light
of totally inward eyes.

I see the phantom now,
and it is my missing innocence
reflected
in the transposed display
of the shock
of seeing myself
as real
and beyond the reach
of falsehood's gagging grasp.

This is the instance
of standing
in my own shoes
and sheading my skin
of leaves
for a nakedness
of honesty and honey,
the sweetness
of being visible
for the first time
and not fearing to be seen.

runningturtle87