What do you know for Sure? [poem]
The big bang [so-called]
(which I doubt has been the start
of anything or even everything)
exploded inside outwards
neverendingly
and we
(in all our ignorance and savag’ry)
are shards of fleshly meteorite
being flung like dung across a galaxy —
imagining we’re more than what we are.
We parrot what we read and hear
from other people’s anecdotes, hypotheses, philosophy,
assumptions, guesses, shootings in the dark
as if they were our own.
There are no wise
save those who say that wisdom cannot come
through what we can be shown
but only by the purity of shatt’ring truths
that bubble up within
and which, if with our hearts we so desire,
having cast all other expectations on the fire,
may possibly be known.
What do you know originally —
revelational epiphany extruded from your core?
Not something that you’ve read or heard.
Not someone else’s secondhand beliefs or words.
Not concepts that you’ve cleverly acquired
through blindly following your peer group herds.
Not what has been encoded in some so-called sacred book.
Not what you learned while on that overpricely course
staged by a so-called holy guy who fucked all female enrolees
despite the fact he had been by your friends endorsed.
Not that which comes from any outside source
but only from within.
What do you know for sure
that hasn’t come from intellectual allure
or from some views which are themselves derivative
rehashed and plagiarised — and thus impure
or from some earthbound dark control religion’s book of rules
designed to render humans as mere tools (and, thereby, also fools)
or from what your own acquisitive and hoardly nature
gathers to itself to make your mind to all your friends seem cool?
We think in all our vanity we know so much.
But we know nothing.
All the knowledge we acquire is just a crutch.
© Alan Morrison, 2014
The Naked Troubadour 