By aeons and generations
And places of all kind –
Ideas of ancestors
Long forgotten by time,
Travelling through the void,
On this lonely mote of dust;
Identities of all kind
Of meanings arbitrary
Thrust onto us,
Without us understanding,
Or knowing any better.
Yet the same crimson essence
Flows through our veins.
We laugh when we’re merry,
And we cry in misery.
The same secret language
Brought us into this world,
Manifested with the same
Borrowed elements,
To be given back
When the lease is up.
Sometimes we are gods,
Healing all wounds,
Or the devil incarnate
Burning anything,
And everything,
And more,
On our meaningless path.
Instead of celebrating,
We are busy separating
Each other and ourselves,
With man-made symbols,
Or a false sense of contrast.
We deprive one another
Of the pleasure of holding
Each other’s hands
Savouring our histories,
Languages and tales,
Stories of all kinds,
Anecdotes of life.
We deny ourselves,
An ephemeral love
In an ephemeral life,
Because of ancestral ignorance
And inherited fears.
We have crossed an ocean of time.
We survived, did we not?
But look at your own reflection
In the dark of my eyes,
And ask yourself :
Is it truly enough?
What if we dared to live?
And honoured our journeys,
By reuniting, as we should,
Mix into each other
Lips into lips,
Souls into souls,
Like rivers of life,
Carrying sediments of stories,
Into an ocean of symphonic,
And operatic odyssey
Where bridges are meant to be
Built and maintained.
Not burned and destroyed.

Image credit: Feature image generated with DALL·E using a prompt based on this poem and its themes.
If this piece resonates with you and you’re a visual artist, I’d love to feature your own soul-crafted work in place of the AI image.