Double Trouble

image borrowed from bing

Double Trouble

“So we grew together

Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,

But yet an union in partition,

Two lovely berries moulded on one stem.”

----William Shakespeare

Some develop from a single egg,

two shells over the same yolk,

others decide to emerge from two eggs,

not quite identical, but still connected;

Some thrive while their twin does not survive.

Andy Garcia, it is said, had a parasitic twin brother

on his shoulder, who died when removed.

Elvis & Liberace had twin brothers who died at birth. 

On the carousel of life, as animals, we are built to last,

but at our birth, our beginning tends to be a fragile

tight-wire act, far from a mere crap-shoot

and yet those twin dice do roll, hit the wall,

and flip over to reveal who we are,

or might be, or were, or will become.

Much too soon we don the veil 

and rush to forget our origins,

our immortality, our spiritual configuration,

our conversations with God,

and our many past lives,

and during those final moments

while we still wore our Janus masks,

when it was clear that beyond the veil,

at our starting point for this journey,

we could see the great serpent

swallowing its own tail, where 

past, present, & future remain

one unbroken unblemished plane--

Yes, we have heard of the twins of myth;

Romulus & Remus,

Apollo & Artemus,

Helen & Clytemnestra,

or my birth favorites

Castor & Pollux;

fathered by Zeus,

brothers of Helen of Troy.

But what of those actual twins who

are often unheralded,

never in the direct spotlight,

content in the shadowy peripherara, like

Kiefer Sutherland’s twin sister Rachel,

Montgomery Clift’s twin sister Roberta,

Joseph Fiennes twin brother Jacob?

It is no secret that each of us harbors

duality, dichotomy, darkness & light,

good & evil, love & hate, and those

pesky right & left-brain shoulder monkeys

chattering incessantly to both sides

of our face;

and these helix twins do co-exist

within the ghost that resides

in the machine, sometimes

raging out of control, but

evermore enriching, coloring,

motivating, enabling, multi-tasking

and embracing,

cajoling and allowing us

to hug more, to love more deeply,

to sacrifice more completely,

to be truly generous,

to give back, to pay it forward,

to forever cherish our inner child,

to remain playful, and to always

have our emotional bags packed,

ready to whole heartedly embark

on the next fabulous adventure

of the mind. 

Glenn Buttkus

June 2013

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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