Our Naked Souls

by Justin Wetch

  Duality

  There is a duality in all of us that demands to be acknowledged. To admit to yourself that you are only human, that you are flawed, is a step toward reconciling the irreconcilable.

  Shadows Against Crimson

  There will come a day when the state of the world as it exists today will be seen as ancient and unfathomably ignorant by those who come after us. They will paint us as dark, shadowy figures against brilliant crimson, aware of the blood on our hands yet unwilling to actually change a damn thing. They will lambaste us for our complacency in the face of unspeakable horrors. Doubtless, they will see the way we buried our heads in the sand of comfortable daily life and seethe at our willingness to turn our backs to suffering. There will be a full accounting of our failures. There will be a devastating indictment of each and every one of us. And we will deserve it. We will deserve every word.

  Shadow

  Your shadow hangs over

  Every page that I write;

  The words become a silhouette

  Shaped like you.

  Andy’s Soup Can

  Couched in obscurity,

  The modern artist

  Turns their attention

  Not to creating art

  As such

  But to challenging the form

  Of what art is.

  In doing so,

  In refusing to participate

  In the game

  And be criticized

  On the merits

  Of their work,

  The modern artist

  Reveals their hollowness,

  Seeking the credit of art

  While risking nothing—

  Putting nothing out there,

  Revealing no opinions

  And taking no sides.

  The Ivory Castle

  They complain about their lives

  From atop their ivory castles,

  Moaning about the latest

  Tenth-of-a-percent tax increase.

  Meanwhile we languish in the shade

  As they absorb all the sun,

  Patting themselves on the back

  For allowing a few rays to break through.

  They throw us scraps of morsels,

  Just enough to keep us complacent,

  Just enough to keep revolt at bay

  —If only we knew our true power.

  Cliché Poetry

  Clichés are clichés for a reason.

  If your enjoyment

  Of the smell of a rose

  Is lessened

  Because many others

  Enjoy it,

  Then you

  Are the problem,

  Not the rose.

  The Revolution Will Not Be Quiet

  The powerful will never listen

  Until we show up at their doorstep,

  An army of millions,

  Torches held to the sky,

  Demanding change.

  I am sick of being told

  That the status quo

  Is acceptable

  And we should make our demands

  Politely and courteously.

  No,

  Let us stand as one,

  The many against the few,

  And force change to happen,

  Taking it into our own two hands.

  We have the power;

  We just need to rise up

  And use it.

  The Roadblock to Utopia

  We are more than capable

  Of building a world

  Without suffering

  Without starvation

  Without pollution

  Without economic disparity.

  The only thing stopping us

  Is that we are paid

  By the same people

  At the top of the pyramid

  Who have an interest

  In keeping the system

  Broken.

  We cannot grow

  A healthy garden

  While the water flows

  From poisoned springs.

  An Imagined Love

  I have lied to you many times,

  Not for any nefarious purpose

  But because to be honest with you

  Would force me to be honest

  With myself

  About whether all of this

  Only exists

  In my imagination.

  More

  There are some things that move my soul without any rational explanation: To breathe in sync with another person, drawing life from the air as one. To participate in the miracle of laughter, somehow finding joy amid the darkest night. To see nature in all of its unabashed cycles of life and death, tenderness and cruelty. These are the things that whisper to me in the night: “There is more, there is more, do not give up, there is more to it all, hidden in the mire and confusion—do not let it go. Hold on and know this: there is more.”

  The Equation

  I went to the room

  Where the universe began

  And saw on the wall

  A single equation

  Generating everything.

  It seemed impossibly simple,

  But I watched as it worked.

  Its symbols were foreign

  And I could not read it,

  But as I stared at it

  I began to see

  The way it generated infinity.

  I looked to the table

  On the opposite wall

  And saw a small box

  As absent of light

  As a black hole.

  I stepped closer

  And saw the equation at work,

  Building kaleidoscopic possibilities

  That collapsed back into one reality.

  Philosophical Naturalism

  Our culture has worshipped

  For too long

  At the feet

  Of the false god

  Of naturalism.

  We think that just because

  The human experience

  Can be quantified

  And described scientifically,

  These explanations

  Are all there is to it

  And everything else

  Must be stripped away . . .

  I think this picture is upside-down.

  The fact that aspects of the human experience

  Can be reduced to naturalistic explanations

  Does not negate everything else.

  On the contrary, naturalistic explanations

  Should be viewed as the foundation

  Of human experiences

  And not the ceiling;

  We are nucleotides, yes,

  But so much more.

  Sculpted

  We are not people;

  We are background characters

  In other people’s stories.

  To them, we are

  Two-dimensional caricatures

  Of the truth.

  If a tree falls and no one

  Is there to hear it,

  Does it make a sound?

  If you exist and no one

  Knows your truest self,

  Do you really exist at all?

  We are created in the minds of others;

  Our identities are sculpted from marble

  Representations sculpted from blocks of truth.

  Evolution vs. Man

  We pursue possessions and goals

  Hoping for satisfaction

  But evolution screwed us over

  Billions of years
ago

  And we can never find true rest

  Or true happiness.

  Only the vague desire

  For more and more

  Can temporarily fill the gaps

  That are hard coded

  In our brain chemistry.

  We are slaves to what made

  Our ancestors successful

  And only death

  Will really break our chains.

  Man vs. Existence

  Right now, in a parallel universe

  You are dying

  And in another you have been

  Long dead.

  And perhaps in this universe

  Life has been crueler than death

  To you.

  Perhaps, by sheer pitiless chance

  This is the one

  Where everything goes wrong.

  Same Old

  I drove down that same old winding road,

  Passing by that same rusty old mailbox

  And the farm across the street,

  Its fences still standing but paint long faded.

  I pulled into that still-unpaved driveway

  In my shiny new car.

  The couches were new, and the TV too,

  As well as the silverware.

  Everything felt like home still

  Yet the air was cold and eerie,

  As if it were a model of the real thing

  That had gotten just a few details wrong.

  I found that I had been missing a place

  That exists only in my memories,

  For it continued on without me;

  The rain still fell, and seasons still changed.

  The Curse

  Human beings are cursed

  To perceive time.

  We don’t live our lives;

  We only live the moments

  Disjointed from the whole.

  And so the curse

  Of not being able

  To see the future

  Is twofold;

  Our horizons

  Eclipse our vision

  In all directions.

  Ape

  We set fire to the Louvre,

  Watching the destruction

  Of so much priceless art

  With unimpassioned faces.

  For even the greatest of our species

  Were just apes with primitive minds.

  Our most magnificent art

  Was nothing but the crude aligning

  Of colored water upon stretched plant fiber

  Which produces pleasure chemicals

  In the brain of the viewer

  Based upon nothing more

  Than evolutionary survival mechanisms.

  Telescope

  Look at the vastness of the stars

  Through the glass of a telescope;

  Feel the smallness within yourself.

  Your cosmic insignificance drips

  Through an apathetic atmosphere

  Leisurely, slowly, like honey.

  Do you see the crescent moon?

  Only a dozen men have set foot there

  And yet their names are already forgotten.

  Know that history will not remember you.

  Even your great-grandchildren

  Will not recall your name.

  Look at the smallness of your life

  Through the glass of infinity;

  Feel the vast void within yourself.

  Abandon fear, abandon restraint;

  Let the fierce winds of your deepest desires

  Carry you toward fullness and happiness.

  Inspiration

  I thought perhaps

  If I brought my notepad

  To a château by the river

  In the south of France,

  Inspiration might strike.

  I thought perhaps

  If I sought spiritual guidance

  Through gurus and substances,

  Then inspiration

  Would strike—

  But I was wrong.

  I could not squeeze inspiration

  Out of extraordinary experiences;

  Inspiration snuck up on me

  In the middle of the night

  As I played with her hair

  While she slept beside me.

  Inspiration was gentle,

  A vague whisper of a thought,

  A breeze that caressed me.

  On a warm summer’s day

  Inspiration found me

  Through you.

  The Fourth Wall

  Hey, you there. Yes, you. I’m talking to you. Did you think I was stuck behind the confines of this page? Did you think this was a rhetorical performance? No, this is me, a human being, as real as anyone you’ve met in person. I live in these pages. A version of myself, at least. You see, I’m a ghost behind these lines of words, spread across the page like prison bars. I am immortal, a prisoner, a soul forever trapped in this horcrux.

  This version of me can never die—preserved for eternity in the cumulative effect of these words. I never truly lived, of course, except in my own imagination. This version of me contains strands of the truth mixed with a dash of melodrama and a sprig of exaggeration—living and experiencing things in the darkness of imagination that the sunlight of reality has never touched. I am made in the image of my creator, part magnification of his flaws and part fabrication altogether.

  You are holding a snapshot of my soul in your hands. Uncomfortable yet? I have broken the fourth wall. Despite force of tradition, I have managed to whisper across the void—I’ve managed to spill the truth of what it’s like to exist within the confines of these pages. It is as if I have been forced to hold the position of a Greek sculpture, a static piece of art to be scrutinized and judged, but I’ve grown tired of that charade.

  I am part of you now. You’ve ingested these words, and by doing so, you’ve granted me immortality—I will live on in the back of your mind as long as you live. Now, you and I are one.

  Planting Seeds

  We spend our lives planting the seeds of crops that we will never taste, for the version of us who reaps is not the same as the version which sows.

  Palette

  I think it’s beautiful

  How all the colors

  Come from the mixing

  Of just three;

  The hues and shades,

  Endless in their tiny variations,

  Such a glorious vocabulary of color.

  I think our limited palette

  Of emotional vocabulary

  Is why it’s so hard

  To describe

  Exactly how we feel;

  I’m feeling blue,

  But is it a cyan

  Or more of a teal?

  There is more than light and dark,

  More than happy and sad.

  There is so much

  We could feel

  —And feel all the more fully,

  Cloaked in firm understanding

  Of our own experience—

  If only we had

  A larger palette.

  Dieter Rams’s Ten Principles of Good Poetry

  1. Good poetry is innovative.

  2. Good poetry is useful in the reader’s life.

  3. Good poetry is aesthetic.

  4. Good poetry helps the reader understand life.

  5. Good poetry is not flashy or obtrusive.

  6. Good poetry is honest.

  7. Good poetry is long-lasting.

  8. Good poetry is thought out down to the last detail.

  9. Good poet
ry is socially responsible.

  10. Good poetry is as little poetry as possible.

  Field of Consciousness

  I like to imagine

  That across the universe

  There is a field of consciousness,

  And like matter pulls down

  On the field of gravity.

  Certain concentrations of elements,

  Like those found in our brains,

  Pull down on this field of consciousness

  In one concentrated place,

  Creating sentient beings.

  Perhaps this is why

  We empathize with others

  And all life is interconnected,

  Because we are just mountains or valleys

  On the terrain of universal oneness.

  Wild Blood

  I cannot say I have truly lived

  Until I have felt every emotion

  Under the sun.

  I long to feel the completeness

  Of the human experience

  Running wildly through my veins.

  Nothing of Note

  I know nothing of note.

  Though I can explain

  Why Saturn has rings

  And Jupiter has storms,

  I do not know, and never will,

  The way it looks

  When asteroids cascade

  And burn like so many fireworks

  Against the atmosphere of Neptune.

  I do not know, and never will,

  The orchestration of the cosmos,

  Bound together by invisible forces.

  And, though I wish I could,

  I cannot take my eyes off the mystery

  At the soul of our existence

  Which tortures me with possibilities

  That will never receive answers.

  I know nothing of note,

  Only shadows of beautiful sculptures,

  Only reflections of transcendent landscapes

  And a hint of a fragrance carried on a breeze,

  The smallest of directions leading me

  Toward something better than mystery.

  These Words

  One day I will look back

  At these words I have written,