consortium of nameless scribes

Endless days filled with nothing,
Longing and desperation entwined,
Looking for the happy ending,
But know damn well it will never be,
The wanting is the problem,
Acceptance the only option,
Crumbs are all we get,
Just a taste/deserve nothing more.
We dream of having everything,
Want to live like kings and queens,
Blessed at birth by the fates,
But the rest of us living in the gutter,
Freedom just an illusion,
Bound by birth and geography,
Time is our prison/time our undoing,
We stare vacantly at our finite tomorrows.
Anchored by empty tradition,
We have friends to envy/family to loathe,
Bloated with expectation,
Echoes down through the years,
Down even through generations,
There to remind us of emptiness—
In our lives/our selves/our souls,
All tragically flawed from the first.
Endless volumes tell us how to live,
Morality tales for the weak and timid,
False promises and useless dreams,
We all know this to be true,
But we long for the fairy tales,
I find myself chasing after the magical,
Little glimpses and moments of transcendence,
A sound/a smell/a taste of the eternal.
Nothing and no one lasts forever,
To think otherwise is vanity,
But that’s what we want,
To be/to have/to hope and dream,
The everyday struggle muddles all,
Only existential angst nothing more,
My absolutes dissolve into shades of grey,
As I sit and watch my life fade away.
I dream/live lifetimes in a few moments,
See the cycle of off and on,
Death and rebirth in endless succession,
Stuck in an endless loop,
Until nibbhana has been achieved,
Be it literal or figurative,
Or just another illusion,
The absurdity of which awakens.
Craving and clinging to this and that,
People/ideas/places/things/thoughts,
All mind-created and sustained,
Developing over endless eons,
After we crawled out of the primordial ooze,
Or created enmasse via computer program,
A bubble or burp in the infinite cosmos,
Leaving no trace after it bursts.
In the midst of all this we try to live,
Dragging our children into the mess,
Willing or otherwise out of the void,
Hand them our hopes and fears,
Do we cripple or do we strengthen,
Not sure where to draw the line,
Tried hard not to perpetuate the lies,
Try to give everything I never had.
Does human nature ever really change,
Are we just animals with over-sized brains,
Trying to convince ourselves we’re in control,
Traveling down the same beaten paths,
Our stories writ large via Shakespeare,
Or some consortium of nameless scribes,
Tragedies touch me the most,
Bittersweet but so real at the same.
What is worth staying around for,
Love and joy and whatever else,
Things which you can never see,
But just like the wind I know it’s real,
I’m busy living my life for everyone else,
Hoping to become worthy at some point,
Tragically funny somehow just now,
Carrying the same affliction for thirty-plus years.