Are We Ever Really Lost?

Perhaps it’s because we have the foresight of children that we believe we are lost in the Amazon rainforest when we are only camping in our backyard a little ways from the warm glow of the house. Not to diminish the perspective. A beagle is still a scary threat to an ant even if it is just a lovable pet to a human. Its paws are still big enough to trample all the day’s hard work, even destroy the entire colony in one playful romp whereas we people are merely inconvenienced by the dirt the pup traces from the yard into the house.

Perspective goes both ways though. Up the mountain. Down the molehill. The scale may or may not be to actual size depending on the person measuring the distance, how up he or she is for the challenge. The more prepared we are for all of life’s happenings, the easier it seems. Yet some things in life are impossible to predict or prepare ahead to experience.

Love being one of the least predictable. It makes us crazy. We behave in ways we never thought we would. We become our own angels and demons. We lose ourselves in it. But are we ever really lost?

Maybe heartbreak is just a path out of the wilderness. It leads us to the heights and depths of our emotional existences. We soar high and dive low, going wider and deeper into ourselves than ever before. This is where we find out who we are. This is where the edges of the earth are defined, the boundaries laid out clearly enough to explore, and the lonely surface raised to meet our feet as we go.

We sit around fires at night and tell stories to one another. We share what comforts. We lean in to the wiser and the older. We secretly feel hope as we watch them kissing their lifelong lovers. It won’t be this way forever. Someday the trees will clear, the sky will bend into an endless panoramic love for each of us. Two by two and one by one. Paradise will be found and all will come.

I've taken a lot of inspiration from my reading of Nietzsche and his "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" for this book as well as mingled it with my own exploration of disillusionment.

We destroy what was

to create what is,

the necessity of reinvention.

We breathe our villains into being

by the fire.

We chisel our heroes in stone.

Tell the timeless tale

to make meaning for ourselves,

seeing faces in the shadows

where there is no one looking

out for us.

We are alone in this

battle with invisible forces.

We are the only hands moving

the pieces on the gameboard.

There are no other players.

We is a lie.  There is only I.

And there is no TEAM in I.

There is no dream of love in this life.

We die alone.

--Mara Merce

We start new lives today.

I with him.

You with her.

For all it was worth

we were a story in a book.

Not a fairytale.

Just an ending

meant for new beginnings.

We lost enough to appreciate winning.

To love the earth as the moon loves her,

and to touch her beauty only with my eyes

sounds romantic despite Nietzsche

meaning something else.

I’ve forgotten you by his hands,

erased you with his tongue exploring

my mouth, left your world behind

as he entered mine.

So this is love—

pressure points and fingertips,

blushing eyes and busy lips.

The rubbing of thighs is better

than a supernatural high.

Still, sometimes I feel you

inside too.  Sorrow stirring

some long lost ache,

soul searching pain.

It’s just an old wound

my bones feel when it rains.

One lifetime is all we get.

The thousand we promised we’d spend

together simply doesn’t exist.

All we have are moments.

Enjoy them.

--Mara Merce

He who masters himself

baits his own hook, his wormy

vices explained in valorous words

as though the wood were soft,

the coffin hardly nailed.

Thy Kingdom come

and you will

come as surely as the kingdom.

The secret lives,

the inner child you gagged and taped,

bound tight inside

the death of a purest dream.

We fight ourselves for pleasure.

We pleasure ourselves when we are tired,

the agony in us ecstasizing our demons.

Uncompromising lust succumbed to

in one long thrust.

No, it is not just.

No, it never was.

--Mara Merce

You carved my name

into your arm

the way I starved my way

into your heart

the pain means

we will never be

apart

bonds like chains

keeping us

in line

walking together

feet inching

into miles

we take

more than what’s given

love

sex

money

it’s all a drug

heart

soul

time

we never have enough

time.

--Mara Merce

Take a different lover

every day of the week

make each one think

he has you

longer than the moment

spent inside you.

It’s whore’s breath

and baby’s blood,

the legacy of unlove

I was born to inherit,

loins of mistrust

paid for wallet lust.

Do you want to take a flight?

The ticket is free,

but it will cost you the night.

In truth, it will cost you everything.

You won’t know the price

until the vice has been paid for,

regret sown in the bed you unmade.

We all want someone else’s hands

unmaking us,

tearing our bodies down

as we build our inner walls,

the way the heart splits then hardens,

cemented fingerprints and names,

the exact spot it had been broken,

lost in the cracks, sidewalks and faded chalk

outlines—POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS.

--Mara Merce

My body is scared.

You are the crow.

You peck me, a crumb.

I only have faith in faith.

Not you.

My original is a sin.

You want me to be

a carbon copy.

What is true to you.

Nothing.

What is true to me?

Everything.

It turned out the fear wasn’t

that you’d love someone new.

It was that I’d love someone too.

--Mara Merce

We celebrate them busts and banners,

enlarged headstones and grave manners.

We bronze their horses in monumental parks,

etch their faces in gold and stone while

we keep watch over their buried bones.

What makes them so great?

They thought something

and wrote it down.

Somebody else

bound their thoughts

and passed them around.

A law was made.  A war was waged.

A life was lost while another was saved.

And that’s enough

for history classes.

An oral tradition making the dead famous

in new mouths.

Why do we need them around?

The repetition of their names forces us

to repeat their god-damned mistakes.

We think for them instead of for ourselves,

toasting vanity as we lower our glasses.

We forget the things that made them asses.

--Mara Merce