Tower

Zdzislaw Beksinski

There is nothing merciful

About these silent departures

For I know neither the source

Nor what manner of apology

Is required to make amends

(if indeed an apology would serve)

 

Did I return to my fortifications

Withholding my affections

As a miser calibrating his fortune?

Perhaps I never left my tower

And you, curious of the spectacle within

Happened briefly upon my window

Withdrawing only on admission

Did I refuse to come outside

Despite your best intentions?

Or did my nakedness invite rejection?

 

I do not know if my exertions

Extend beyond my anxieties

If I struggle with individuals

Or merely with the stereotypes

Of society in a more generic sense

 

Perhaps I think of myself alone

The breath, the progression, the dalliance

Perhaps I am more actor than student

More dreamer than industrialist

I doubt I’ve set one neuron

Outside since conception

 

I might even be a letter penned

In darkness by one who has concluded

That we are all just machines to freedom

(Can anyone claim autonomy of thought or deed?

Even spontaneity is premeditated for effect )

 

I am not different enough

To claim another species

And yet all novelty seems

Taboo when first encountered

We learn so much less from success

Success being a script

And so rarely a measure of value

Given the methods of attainment

 

I think we must be in purgatory

Why else would we repeat

The abominations of our histories?

Perhaps there is a fundamental flaw

In our records, to let the victor alone speak

Does it not assume of gluttony, virtue?

*

I don’t usually write down my stream of conscious thoughts because usually they don’t make any sense but today that is precisely what I did haha

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