Explorers

Painting by Chris Murray

Explorers

Do we live only in this moment,
during this breath, and all else
is memory or conjecture?

Is my life your dream, or yours mine,
or are we merely busy parasites
between the toes of God?

We struggle with reason,
search for meaning, conjure up
beauteous myths regarding past lives,
pre-life, afterlife, life between lives,
and love to postulate that we never
are victims, but captains of every
tragedy, every honor, every shame,
existentially responsible for every shred
of decency or decadence in our scenarios,
empowered architects of some Bardoian
boiler plate outline for each incarnation,

yet the media distracts us, libraries do not
beckon to us, book stores lack the literary
luster of our youth, and we constantly
find ourselves plugged into an instantaneous
cyberland, with the entire world now
at our fingertips, bathed in awareness of
every event occurring each minute,
the planet shrunken to the size of a
regulation basketball, growing impatient
during any wait that exceed ten seconds,

being seduced by the fetching sirens
of technology, begging the machines
to pilot our way, park our vehicles, lift
our labors, craft our leisure, and allowing
the zap and whir of our computers to
begin to sound like children’s laughter;

only vaguely wondering where does it lead,
becoming loquacious lemming marching
blindly toward some distant sea cliff,
billions on queue, back to back,
belly to belly, immersed, dissuaded, driven,
with itunes in our ear buds, Avatar on our
smart phones, and a stuporous grin etched
permanently upon the jaw of our journey
to a blind new world.

Glenn Buttkus

September 2011

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