Man, the Amnesiac

 

You are the heirs of Adam and Eve.
Inside you Original Beauty lies concealed!
Oh, when will you remember?

I see you scratch your head in the marketplace
Looking for your keys,
You body become large and hard
Like a fortress
To keep Soul-bird locked away.

How have you forgotten, O Man?
How can you live through your life
Scratching your head as if to remember
Where you left your keys, but actually trying
To remember where you left yourself?

How did you create
That mold that is not you?
How do you keep living there
Fifty, seventy-five years,
Smiling and joking till the very end
As though you were in there somehow?

Yes, you are there,
But dying of mortal fear
In the cellars and dungeons within you.
Yes, you are there, but saying,

"I must let no one see me."
 I must let no one know me.
 I must behave always perfectly,
 Lifting my spoon with precision to stir my tea,
 Lipstick always perfect,
 Speaking only words that are expected"--

All to conform to a mirrored image
Seen in the world and reflected
A million times in people and things.

But those who reflect yourself to you
Are themselves looking to you
To reflect themselves to them!

In this way mirrors of untruth
Endlessly distort gesture and word,

Spreading misconception out over hills and seas
Till mirrors' lie brooks no contradiction
                                           in the billions' eyes.

Then would the world destroy itself.

But there is a flaw in this devil's plan.
Hidden in this well of emptiness are Vats of Truth,
Treasure-Houses in human form
Storing enough wealth for all to be rich!

"Cheesebooger and a medium root beer,"
                              says the waitress.

Someday the Treasure will spill out onto her.
Someday she will discover the Cinderella wings
Lying waiting within her own form,
The faerie wings and the storehouses of dignity.

Someday she will know
That all we see are props
And that all props come from within.

Someday the gossiping ladies will know that they are God!
Someday the rude service station attendant will be
An overflowing Ocean of Love!

We must swim upstream to the Source of ourselves!
We who have forgotten must remember!

Under the masks and the charades,
Adam and Eve, I am calling you!