Up in Smoke [poem]
All we have on which to base our ego view of who we are
is memories, thoughts and notions from the past.
The present doesn’t figure in our minds in terms of
shaping our identity. For every moment lived up
to the full is secretly a false-self-slaughtering iconoclast!
This is no joke.
If we could ask ourselves the telling question “Who am I?”
every single answer that we give is based on concepts
we’ve accumulated from experience that has gone before.
But if we base our answer on the present moment
(that is, every moment in succession barely having time to
be itself before the next one overtakes it through the door)
we’ll see that we are not at all the creature who we think we are
but something we might distantly have glimpsed vague from afar.
In fact what happens next will blow our tiny minds
for none of us exists as Mister so-and-so or Mrs, Ms
or Master, Miss or any other epithet we dream.
In truth we’re dangling head-first over a both dark
and lightsome bottomless abyss in silent scream.
This is no joke.
For when we see the present moment
everything we think we are goes up in smoke!
.
.
© Alan Morrison, 2014
The Naked Troubadour 